Cover Page
The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/20858 holds various files of this Leiden University
dissertation.
Author: Julius-Adeoye, ‘Rantimi Jays
Title: The drama of Ahmed Yerima : studies in Nigerian theatre
Issue Date: 2013-05-08
Chapter four
Socio-political realist plays:
The Lottery Ticket, Kaffir’s Last Game, The Sisters, Mojagbe,
and Little Drops
The relationship between drama and socio-political engagement is at stake in
Nigerian literary criticism at least since the first playwrights began to publish in
European languages. 458 This chapter will investigate this relationship in the
specific case of Ahmed Yerima’s drama. It will also raise the question if the
playwright’s artistic expression can be independent or not. According to Femi
Osofisan:
Literature can entertain, in fact must entertain, but it is only the dim or
brainwashed artist who is content merely to entertain, to play the
clown. The primary value of literature seems to me to lie in its
subversive potential, that explosive charge which lies hidden behind
the facade of entertainment and which must be controlled and made to
[explode] for the use of our people, of mankind . . . Literature must be
used to play its role in the advancement of our society, in the urgent
struggle against neocolonialism and the insidious spread of fascism. 459
This statement by Femi Osofisan captures, to a large extent, the thematic
preoccupation of the majority of Nigerian literary drama. Nigerian literary
dramatists often rely on what Osofisan refers to as the “subversive potential,
that explosive charge which lies hidden behind the facade of entertainment.” 460
This potential serves to remind the people of the wrong-doing of governments
and other social institutions. While it was a little difficult to stage political
assertive plays under the military government of the 1990s, there was no
censorship of published texts. Playwrights in Nigeria usually publish their own
texts by giving them to desired press. Nigeria government has not clamped
down on publishing companies who publish material without first submitting it
to the necessary government agency. This means that a playwright will have his
work published as long as he can afford the cost of publication. The publishing
458
See James E. Henshaw, This is Our Chance: Plays from West Africa (London: ULP, 1956)
Awodiya, Muyiwa, (ed.), Excursions in Drama and Literature: Interview with Femi Osofisan
(Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1993), 9
460
Awodiya, Muyiwa, (ed.), Excursions in Drama and Literature: Interview with Femi Osofisan
(Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1993), 10
459
145
companies are privately owned; to remain in operation, they will publish any
material given to them. Based on the almost lacking of censorship of published
drama in Nigeria, playwrights seize the opportunity to discuss political and
social issues as the issues affect them. However, at what point did socio-realist
issues become fulcrum for dramatic creation in Nigeria? According to
Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi:
Nigeria, Athena-like, popped out of Lord Lugard’s head without the
would-be Nigerians participating in the birthing process. In the absence
of the patriarch, the result has been a monstrous polygynous household,
incapacitated with petty rivalries, perpetually at war with itself. …”461
What Ogunyemi Chikwenye called “monstrous polygynous household” (a
coalescence of different ethnic nationalities) coupled with an unstable political
system, electoral fraud and corruption brought about the first military coup in
Nigeria on January 15, 1966, six years after its independence. Shortly after, the
nation was plunged into an orgy of killing in a three-year civil war that began
in 1967 and ended in 1970. Since its independence in 1960, political changes in
Nigeria through elections have been fraught with manipulation, hence, the
military is always waiting in a corner to seize power when the people complain.
Past military leaders in Nigeria were no different than politicians because they
were not particularly interested in conducting a credible election. For example,
until Gen. Sani Abacha, the military head of state at the time died suddenly in
office in 1997, he organized a symbolic election in order to remain in office
whereby no significant change of any sort was going to transpire. The symbolic
election is a system, which does not constitute a means of altering the top
leadership, the administration, or the regime. This process of forced political
transition in the form of military coup d’état has been the most prevalent way
of inducing change against the will of those in office 462 in the majority of
African countries. The outcome of these symbolic elections have been political
instability and civilian insurrection, which are now of rapid frequency in
Nigeria. In his reconstruction of the Nigerian civil war barbarity, Soyinka wrote
Madmen and Specialist (1971), as a tragic satire of humankind immersed in
war. As indicated in the introduction, Femi Osofisan and Kole Omotosho are
basically concerned with the neo-colonial state of the Nigerian nation with all
461
Ogunyemi, Chikwenye O., Africa Wo/man Palava: The Nigerian Novel by Women (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996), 332
462
Chazan, N., Mortimer, R., Ravenhill, J., Rothchild, D., Politics and Society in Contemporary
Africa (Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 215
146
its attendant problems. In the 1990s, attention of the various dramatists shifted
from creating a collective or community heroic figure to creating survivalists;
how an individual survived the strangulating neo-colonial social, political, and
economic realities within the society.
The new plays are focused on individual survival strategies rather than
an elusive utopian society as the one that is presented in the plays of the radical
dramatists. The survivalist dramatists present characters that strive to emerge
from the strangulating laws and treatments given by the government and
society at large. To these characters, attention is not focused on fighting for the
freedom of the group by rousing collective heroes, but finding an opportunity
for individual survival with or without external support.
The Lottery Ticket, Kaffir’s Last Game, The Sisters, Mojagbe, and
Little Drops, are socio-political realist plays because they represent the reality
of the country where they emerged in the same manner as the previous plays. I
have grouped these plays under realism based on their thematic preoccupations
and writing style of the playwright. Some of these works also deal with the
impermanence of human existence. Contrary to the religious realist plays
discussed in chapter three of this thesis, all the plays discussed in this chapter
are human-centred. They emphasize “people’s rational understanding, agency,
and progressive capacities.” 463 These plays are inspired by on the social,
political and economic reality of the Nigerian state. They discuss the decadence
that permeates the nation’s social and political space over the past two decades
(1990-2010). This is a period when greed, corruption, unemployment, poverty,
political and sectarian violence were at their highest. This is also the period
when government marginalization of the working class is a determinant for the
mass exodus to the land where the grass seems greener (Europe and United
States).
In Nigeria, coup d’état, sit-tight governance, and violence were the
alternative to good government. Between 1990 and 1999, Nigeria had five
different governments, three of which were military. In the following decade,
there were two transitional governments as a result of the return to democratic
governance. In some of the works studied, especially in Little Drops, the issue
of women suffering at the hands of weapons-wielding violent militants who
call themselves freedom fighters and government’s forces is discussed. These
militants’ violence, as well as the recent destructions being perpetuated by the
463
Morris, Pam, Realism (London/New York: Routledge, 2003), 166
147
Islamic Fundamentalist Boko Haram 464, have put Nigeria in the global map of
modern domestic terrorism. The military activities treated in The Mirror
Cracks, which I have already discussed in chapter three, would have found a
space here, but it is not a central issue in the drama. Supo’s military violence is
used in the play to explain the hypocritical attitude of religious organized
institutions. Another topic related to political violence is to be seen in Kaffir’s
Last Game 465: The play discusses the current diplomatic relations between
South Africa and Nigeria by x-raying the socio-political entanglement in and
between the two nations. The play also highlights that the violence the Nigerian
military government of General Sanni Abacha visited on opposition groups. In
order to escape assassination, many political activists and academics fled the
country; those who were not lucky enough to escape were put in jail or
murdered. Yerima uses Professor Omobusola in Kaffir’s Last Game to
represent the voice of freedom fighters that were put in jail by the government.
In the author’s note to Kaffir’s Last Game, Yerima writes that the play
is his “reaction to the relationship between two great countries, South Africa
and Nigeria…The essence… is the love-hate relationship between both
countries.” 466 His motivation for this play, some few years after South Africa
emerged from a strangulating apartheid regime, is worthy of study. To help
South Africans out of the evil of apartheid, Nigeria played a pivotal role by
expending both human and financial resources. Nigeria also provided a ready
home for the oppressed black population of South Africa. However, true to
Yerima’s prognosis, “the love-hate relationship between both countries” came
to a head in 2008. In a series of xenophobic attacks, many South Africans
began to dispossess of properties and, in some cases outrightly to kill nonnationals in South Africa, including Nigerians residing or travelling through the
country. 467
In The Sisters, there is the unraveling of the vanity and deceit that
characterize the lives of the high and mighty in the Nigerian society. The play
464
None of the plays studied discuss the issue of Islamic Fundamentalist group known as Boko
Haram. This is because the group only became known in 2010 when President Goodluck
Jonathan assumes office as the President of Nigeria at the sudden death of President Umar Musa
Yar’dua in March 5, 2010. The Boko Haram (No to any form of Western education) group,
whose mission is to enthrone Sharia in Nigeria, plans to overthrow the government of Jonathan
whom they consider an infidel as he is a non-Muslim. They have succeeded in destabilizing
government in some states in Northern Nigeria by detonating bombs in many public buildings
including Christianc Churches and killing innocent worshippers.
465
Kaffir’s Last Game was written in 1997, and had its premiered performance in February, 1998
466
Yerima, Ahmed, Kaffir’s Last Game (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 1998), 6
467
See BBC mobile, “SA Leader Orders Army to Deploy”, 16:17 GMT, Wednesday, 21 May
2008 17:17 UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7412128.stm
148
stresses the impermanency of life, political power and social status. The play,
along with Mojagbe, makes a truism of the Nigerian maxim “No condition is
permanent.” In Little Drops, through the overt deployment of socio-political
realism, the playwright makes the lines between illusion and reality almost nonexistent. In both The Sisters and Little Drops, there is the exposition of the facts
that in most male dominated or phallocentric societies, women remain
subservient and are often reduced to commodities.
Structure
All the plays studied are one-act plays that follow a linear progression. Apart
from Kaffir’s Last Game, the rest of the plays have a “moving” plotline-a
situation where there is a constant entry and exit of characters. All the plays
have more than a single subplot; nevertheless, one issue leads to another in
quick succession without abandoning the main plot. The storylines are simple
enough for ease of understanding without major complications. Apart from
Mojagbe, whose action takes place over many days and which also has a
change of scene from Mojagbe`s palace to the masquerade grove, the rest of the
plays take place in one day and in one location. With these plays, Yerima
seems to be making a call to the reader-audience to re-examine government
attitude toward civilian lives and national values and to resist the onslaught on
integrity of human lives that is fast eroding the moral lives of society.
As the plays progress, Yerima, at intervals, brings the reader-audience
back to the seriousness and the setting of the plays with much paraphernalia.
For example, Mojagbe 468, the only one among the plays under discourse with a
pre-colonial setting, is crafted within the traditional African performance mode
with music, dance, chants and songs as embellishment and propelling tools. In
Kaffir’s Last Game there is an occasional announcement from the airport public
address system informing passengers of the arrival of a new flight, delay,
departure and cancellation of others. In The Lottery Ticket and Mojagbe, there
is the use of radio jingles, songs, incantations, poetry, backchannel
communication like “yes, oh yes, uh, yeee, huum, yeah, ha ha, oh, taitai,
mama”, and so on, which are also frequent in The Sisters and Little Drops as
vehicle for effective communication. There is a continuous sound of guns, and
explosive devices and war music in Little Drops to constantly remind the
468
I have not included Mojagbe under historical realist plays because it is not a play constructed
based on any historical occurence. The protagonist and other characters of the play were
imagined. Mojagbe is a fictionalized play that Yerima uses to comment on the contemporary
leadership situation in Nigeria. Although, the names of some villages and towns used in the play
exist in Nigeria.
149
characters and the reader-audience where the play is set. All of this
paraphernalia, apart from reinforcing the settings of the plays to the readeraudience, also indicate changes in mood and tempo of the plays. They serve as
evidence of attention, interest and understanding on the reader-audience’s part,
and they clearly keep conversations flowing smoothly between the characters
of the play.
In Mojagbe and Little Drops, there is the continuation of the technique
of bridging the gap between the worlds of the dead and the living which he had
already developed in The Angel. This technique allows for the recently dead to
appear on stage to reveal a hidden aspect of the play to the protagonist in order
to effectively resolve the plays’ conflicts. At times this technique creates its
own challenges; for example one may ask, “what is the need for breaking the
wall of reality with the introduction of the ghost into a possible situation?” and
“why does Yerima use the ghost to resolve conflicts?” However, as indicated in
the previous chapter, the religious background from which the play emerges
recognizes the collapse of the physical and the spiritual world. The traditional
Nigerian society believes that some people within the physical world can visit
the spiritual world and, in the same manner that some spiritual beings visit the
physical world.
The Sisters opens with Nana who comes on stage to switch on the light
to reveal a grand room. This is a significant action to the understanding of the
play itself since the play is about death; light in this context symbolizes life,
while darkness symbolizes death. Within this short interval, there is a transition
from death to life (from a world where everything seems to be still to the world
where everything moves), from the gloom that the president’s death presented
to the vivacity that the reunion of the ambassador’s children signify. The room,
which serves as the setting of the play, is a presidential palace, and the
president had just died suddenly in his office, therefore, the nation is in a state
of mourning. Like in The Mirror Cracks and The Twist, death becomes the
springboard that propels the movement of The Sistersas the play takes place a
day before the burial of the late president. According to Yerima, “The
president’s death provides an occasion for the sisters to come to grips with...
realities and to re-examine their lives after all the disappointments and
misfortunes they have been through.” 469 I think that what Yerima is saying is
that the fear of death and void provide an occasion for self re-assessment by the
living.
469
Yerima, The Sisters, 2001. See the back page.
150
Like The Lottery Ticket, Kaffir’s Last Game and Little Drops, The
Sisters is a one-act play with non-stop action from the opening to the end. The
play is structured around four sisters who are the children of a late ambassador.
As I have mentioned in the previous chapter, Yerima is class conscious in his
plays. Funmi, the supposed eldest of the sisters, is the First Lady of the country
(Nigeria). She is powerful and influential. In order to demonstrate her power,
she employs state resources to summon her sisters. It is to be noted that her
sisters were not part of her life when the president was alive, at least not Taiwo
and Toun. This time she wants her sisters by her side in the moment of her
grief. This unfortunate meeting and the manner through which they come
together allows for the sisters to bare their souls without any restriction. It also
allows for the revelation of the atrocities committed by the men in their lives.
Mojagbe, set in a fictitious Yoruba town, 470 is a play crafted within the
traditional African society. It has power and leadership as its thrust and
especially how it is easy for the two to be wrongly applied. At the opening of
the play, four women in ritual clothing appear on stage with oil lamps bearing
staffs with bells, and they move to the rhythm of a ritual music. According to
the play, these four women possess the power of witchcraft.
The supernatural power associated with witchcraft among Africans is a
malevolent spirit often used to perpetuate wickedness. The people who consult
witches and wizards exert esoteric knowledge to achieve negative deeds over
their victims. These women are regarded as the owners of the night and
darkness, even of the material world. This does not mean that there are no male
witches. In many Yoruba communities, there are representations of two types
of witchcraft in the society. The witches who often perpetuate wickedness are
Aje Dudu, while those who work for the good of the society are called Aje
Funfun. 471 The attributes of African witchcraft share semblance with medieval
and later Renaissance Europe, especially as contained in Reginald Scot’s The
Discoveries of Witchcraft. 472 I doubt if there is much difference with witches
represented in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and in the works of many
Elizabethan writers either. Raymond Prince argues that among the Yorubas,
witchcraft is regarded as feminine art:
470
The playwright did not give the name of the town in the play rather he refers to it as a tributary
state of Oyo kingdom.
471
Personal interview with Dr. Gabriel Adekola Oyewo, the Balogun of Oba Community, Osun
State, Nigeria on March 15, 2012
472
Regina Scot, The Discoveries of Witchcraft (Kent: R.C., 1584)
151
...witchcraft is a feminine art and has its power from Eshu, the trickster
god, and was sanctioned, if somewhat reluctantly, by Orunmila (lfa)
the god of Fate, and by Olorun, the Lord of all. This power is generally
attributed to older women, but young women or even girls can
sometimes be involved. [...] A witch's malignancy may be turned upon
a man for almost any reason-for some slight impoliteness, or because
he accuses her of being a witch, or because he is getting too high in the
world or often for no reason “just because they are evil women”. 473
Esu, the trickster and messenger god, has been previously discussed in chapter
three of this work. Therefore, I will not discuss it again here. It must be noted
that the belief in the existence of the witches among the Yorubas, and indeed
Africans, is powerful: it is part of everyday reality even among the educated
elites and Christians who are always seeking protection from God against their
perceived evil machinations. However, it must be noted that the Nigerian
traditional society is very well biased towards the emancipation of women from
traditional authorities that are often put in place by men. Women who are
powerful enough to challenge the male organized traditional institutions are
often regarded as witches. For example, Mrs Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti 474,
who organized a women’s rebellion against the traditional ruler of Ake,
Abeokuta and the colonial imposition of female tax in the 1950s was labelled a
witch for her actions.
Wole Soyinka acknowledges the power of the telluric women in his
Madmen and Specialist, where he refers to them as “Earth Mothers.” The
Yorubas call the telluric women “Awon Iya Aye” (The Mother of the Earth).
In Mojagbe, the telluric women are imbued with positive
characteristics as they invoke the spirit of Layewu (ancestral Masquerade of
Death) to consume King Mojagbe: the oppressor of the masses. This is often
the case when there is fallout between them and someone who had earlier
consulted with them for power. Mojagbe was formally under their protection
but later falls out of favour with them. According to the leader of the women,
the death of the king will “give our people the respite that they need.” 475 The
473
Raymond Prince,“The Yoruba Image of the Witch” in The Journal of Mental Science 107,
1961, 795-805
474
Mrs Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti was an educated political figure in colonial Nigeria. She
organized the women who sent the paramount ruler of Ake kingdom, Abeokuta on an exile in
1950s. She was the first Nigerian woman to drive a car and was also a part of Nigerian delegate
to London to demand for the country’s independence in the late 1950s. She is the mother of the
Nigerian famous Afrobeat musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
475
Yerima, Ahmed, Mojagbe, 9
152
people united together and, by aligning their voices with the king-makers, place
a white calabash on the throne. The significance of the calabash presentation is
synonymous with the Oyo Mesi (king makers of Oyo kingdom) who demands
that a failed king commits suicide in order to bring peace to the kingdom. This
is where the idea of calabash placement on the throne is borrowed from.
Mojagbe, recognizing the demands of his people, refuses to act accordingly.
Instead, he (Mojagbe) reprimands the Chiefs and pronounces: “and here you all
are, the only ones who could have sent such messages of death to the king, my
once trusted friends, handpicked by me.” 476 In order to unseat King Mojagbe,
the people embark on protests and demonstrations against his various inhuman
actions and kingship. Abese reports to the king thus:
Kabiyesi ...it is the women. They have all come from the market led by
Iyaloja and the elders of the conclave. They refuse Prince Esan to be
beheaded at the market square. Half of them are naked. 477
King Mojagbe responds with anger and irrationally summons his war generals
to kill the protesters:
...Insolence! Insubordination! Balogun, take a few palace soldiers and
cut them all down. 478
As Mojagbe is a social commentary on the Nigerian political situation, Kaffir’s
Last Game discusses the festering socio-political situation in Nigeria under the
tyrannical government of General Sanni Abacha. It also reveals South Africa’s
problems of youth restiveness and incessant crimes which are often blamed on
long years of the apartheid regime. Kaffir’s Last Game is a two character play;
its action is based on the unexpected meeting of a Nigerian Professor of
Political Science, Benjamin Omodele Omobusola, and his former student
Mbulelo Kwandebele Makwetu from South Africa. Mbulelo Kwandebele
Makwetu studied Political Science in Nigeria under Professor Omobusola
during the apartheid period in South Africa after which he became a member of
the Youth Wing of African National Congress (ANC). At the time, ANC was
the leading opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa. In order to avoid
arrest, many of the members’ carried-out covert operations from outside the
476
Yerima, Ahmed, Mojagbe, 26
Yerima, Ahmed, Mojagbe, 30-31
478
Yerima, Ahmed, Mojagbe, 31
477
153
border of the country. Professor Benjamin Omodele Omobusola secures an
eighty thousand dollar per year lecturing appointment with a University in
Cape Town, and Mbulelo Kwandebele Makwetu asks him to not take the
position in South Africa. He wants the professor to continue to fight from
within because his departure will deplete the ranks of Nigerian activists who
are challenging the military government. It might also be that Mbulelo, who
considers the professor as a guru of political science, nurses the ambition of
having him write new books on the Nigerian experience from within rather than
as an external observer. Professor Omobusola sees his new appointment as
manna from heaven after thirty-five years of teaching. He is going to earn in
one year in South Africa more that all he earned in total as a professor teaching
in Nigeria. Infact, his salary until retirement in Nigeria was ten thousand naira
per month. Mbulelo does not share the optimism of the professor; rather he sees
departing Nigeria as a bad omen for the nation he is fleeing from. Mbulelo
prevails on the professor to not view the appointment as an opportunity of
striking a supposed goldmine in a foreign nation.
While Professor Omobusola is a retired university don back in Nigeria,
Mbulelo on the other hand is an important political figure in the South African
government having risen from the Youth Wing of ANC to the main political
party as a freedom fighter. This unexpected encounter of the two political
scientists at the Johannesburg Airport reveals many political issues in both
countries (Nigeria and South Africa). Kaffir’s Last Game employs political
satire in shedding light on socio-political menace (brain drain, unfavourable
political climate, youth restiveness, and dictatorial governance) that are
confronting both Nigeria and Soth Africa. As in Kaffir’sLast Game, also in The
Lottery Ticket, Yerima discuss the socio-reality of both the Nigerian society
and South Africa.The Lottery Ticket is based on the prevalent greed and
corruption which pervade every strata of the Nigerian society. Violence and
religious chalatanism characterize the lives of many of the play’s characters.
Little Drops, on the other hand, is a tragedy and a realist play set in the swamp
or ‘battle field’ of the Nigeria Niger Delta. The play talks about the pugnacious
militant activities in the oil region. Since the militancy activities in the Niger
Delta, government revenue from crude oil exploration has dwindled. The
government establishment of Joint Military Taskforce (JTF) to combat the
militants turns the Niger Delta’s creek into a theatre of war. The residents of
the region live in fear constantly. For this, in Little Drops, the approach of the
intruder only means the arrival of danger to Memekize, the hero of the plays,
and on whose side of the creek the whole action takes place.
154
Characters
The characters in the plays studied are realistic. As said earlier in page 3,
realism is a discursive strategy that constructs the “impression” of realistic
description for a large array of motivations. The plays here are one-act plays, of
which their language and characteristics are typical of the role they represent.
For example, it is typical in Nigeria to address individuals according to their
professions or titles. Their names are means of characterization as in some of
the plays of Femi Osofisan. In the plays of Osofisan, it is common to have the
characters named after their occupation or social position. Often personalities
like clergymen wear their robe or cassock in public to depict their positions. In
The Bishop, The Twists and The Mirror Cracks, all the clergymen characters
have the prefix reverend or bishop before their names. They are also imbue
with mannerisms like calling God at intervals, blessing the characters with
them and so on. In The Sisters and The Wives, the characters wear black clothes
to signify mourning. Professor in Kaffir’s Last Game is an example of how
Yerima use name and description to enhance characterization and make his
characters a represention of their class in society. Apart from the military
officers in The Mirror Cracks, the other characters wear black clothes. The
characters in The Lottery Ticket use speech as appropriate with their class.
Their clothes as described in the play and language are approapriate with their
characters.
Yerima often draws his characters from the same social class. It is
common to see politicians, diplomats, lawyers, reverend gentleman or bishops
as characters in the same play than having them play with people of social
status far below their standing in society, except for an occasional inclusion of
domestic staff. Since all the plays under discourse are one-act, attention is
placed on the characters for the duration captured and not on the physical
appearances or their states of mind before the opening of the play.
In Kaffir’s Last Game, a two character play, there is the technique of
playing multiple roles. Both the sixty-five-year-old Professor Omobusola and
the forty-year-old Mbulelo constantly swap roles. They also play different
characters in order to achieve the effective satirical exposé of some of the
situations being discussed in the play. On one occasion both become singers
with Mbulelo leading and at the same time singing the chorus with the
professor. The song is to deride the anti-people policies and sit-tight syndrome
of African political leaders.479
479
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 21
155
Little Drops has six characters who are victims of the militant
confrontational activities and government repression tactics in the oil rich Niger
Delta region. The play Little Drops opens with Memekize, the old woman of
about seventy-five years who lives in the swamp by the creek. She is roasting
yam and at the same time bemoaning her fate under the barrage of gun fire,
when suddenly she hears the approach of an intruder. Almost all six characters
in Little Drops are women except for Ovievie’s ghost and Kuru, a wounded
militant leader. Kuru, who is in his early thirties, is seeking an escape route out
of the creek as he has lost his colleagues to the superior fire-power of the
government JTF forces. The others include Mukume, a woman in her early
twenties who was raped by three militant members on her wedding night;
Azue, she is in her early twenties, young wife of the murdered King. At the
time she appears on stage she has her dead son strapped to her back; and
Bonuwo, a school teacher in her mid-forties whose forty-one students were
bombed by the JTF’s explosives.
The playwright’s choice to make a play that has predominantly female
characters is intentional. This is an attempt to give voice to females to talk
directly to a society that fails to address the plight of women even when it
realizes the loss of women yet still requires them to be docile and accept their
losses quietly. Women live in fear constantly, losing their husbands, children
and daily lives. Even in the midst of the clashes between the militants and the
government forces, the women are poise to defend their territories:
She is frightened but tries to remain calm as she continues to watch out
for any danger. Then she hears the sound of someone breathing and
running. She wears a hood and a big leather jacket. She looks like a
tough militant in the dim lights on the stage. She runs to carry what
looks like a wrapped gun with a wrapper. She covers the roasting water
yam, and hides by the bush. 480
In the few lines above, Yerima gives a vivid portrayal of life in a war-like
situation where the strong-willed prepares to kill or be killed. Memekize, an old
woman who has seen both the good and the bad periods of life, becomes the
strength and the resilient spirit of the rest of the women and even of Kuru, the
defeated militant leader. She symbolizes the resilient spirit of the creek
dwellers. To most of the inhabitants of the creeks and the adjoining villages,
she is assumed to be a mythical figure. In reverence of her assumed
480
Yerima, Little Drops, 9
156
superhuman nature, songs are composed in her name, and she is referred to as
the legendary old woman by the river bank. Memekize’s dwelling is like a
shrine, as it becomes the nourishing point for the deprived and those escaping
from the degradation of life. As a realistic character like the others in the play
she has suffered losses and shows fear at the approach of danger.
Psychologically, Memekize, who has become unbalanced by the loss of
her husband and children in a single day, prefers a melancholic life by staying
close to their graves, which she personally dug. For forty years, life stood still
for her, and she closed herself to the changes going on in the world around her
by staying at the same spot. She survived only on what she could get from the
river and swampy forest where she lives.
The beautiful thing about the character of Memekize is that it is not
static and not given to a singular interpretation. Her character shifts between
realism and symbolism. She symbolizes healing, strength, courage and also a
kind of god all the women could worship. She is like the four telluric women in
Mojagbe, imbued with longevity, power of discernment and manipulation as
she easily disarms everyone that comes her way. Azue, Bonuwo, and Mukume
unlike Memekize are more realistic in presentation.
In all of the characters, there is evidence of torture, agony and
deprivation in time of war. The characters are used as a moral agent to remind
humanity of the meaninglessness of war in any guise. From a realist point of
view, Mukume is in her early twenties, beautiful, lively and ready to bloom.
The symbolic Mukume can be interpreted as the Niger Delta land, defiled and
destroyed by different multinational oil companies exploiting for crude oil and
running their pipes through the many villages in the creek. The teacher
Bonuwo, who had taught some of the militant youths, including Ovievie at the
village school, is in her middle-age, while Azue, the young and beautiful
widowed queen, is around the same age as Mukume. Azue not only loses her
husband (the king) to the militants, she also loses her only child to a stray bullet
which could have been fired by either the JTF or the militants. The death of
Azue’s son signifies the end of a generation. While the old generation
represented by the King is murdered in cold blood by those he was
representing, with the death of the child the play seems to be telling the Niger
Delta militants that if the insurgency is continued, very soon there will be no
generation to take over the land they are warring over. The play, to an extent,
vindicates the government forces rather than condemning the repressive action
taken by it. The massacre of the innocent children by the government explosion
157
may be interpreted as an attempt to further bring to an end the future generation
of the Niger Delta.
Ovievie, as a minor character in the play was killed by his own camp of
militants whom he defrauded before running ahead to get married to Mukume.
The character of Ovievie seems not necessary in the play, however, as he
appeared to explain to Mumuke why he was murdered and to invite her to join
him in the land of the dead. Mukume and Bonuwo may be looked upon as not
being in the fullness of their sensesdue to these recent experiences. Their seeing
and speaking with Ovievie’s ghost may only be a figment of their imaginations
as he was taken away and killed by the militants on the night of his marriage to
Mukume.
Like in The Angel where the murdered Chief appeared to Otunba in his
living-room, Ovievie appeared to Mukume, who was not aware that he was part
of any militant group, to apoplogize and abeg for forgiveness. However, at the
end of both encounters, we are still at a loss as to whether the two dead people
really appeared or if it was only the imagination of those they appeared to.
Nevertheless, the reader-audience accepts itas it is part of the social reality of
the society of the play. In both plays, at the departure of the ghost characters,
both Otunba and Mukume looked as if they have suddenly come out of a
trance; they are not sure if the meeting was real or imagined. Since other
characters are not aware of their (Otunba and Mukume) experiences, it can be
justifiably argued that it is not a real encounter but a ploy to achieve a sense of
purgation for these characters.
In the The Sisters, Toun is the second of Ambassador’s children from
his legal wife and is in her mid-fifties. She is a school administrator and a
divorcee. She is pretentious and constantly professes her dependence on the
Christian faith but relies more on her elder sister Funmi-a superficial characterfor support, always ready to agree with her on issues because she lacks the
capacity for independent reasoning. Taiwo is quick to reprimand her for always
agreeing with Funmi on every matter, even when the latter is wrong:
Taiwo: Please for once Toun agree with yourself. Be your own person,
and speak up. Say what you feel. 481
Taiwo, who is fifty-three years old, is the last child of the ambassador. She is a
lawyer, novelist, poet, and fearless character. She represents the intellectual
minds and conscience of the oppressed people in the Nigerian society. Her
481
Yerima, Ahmed, The Sisters, 33
158
husband, Joe, had been implicated in a coup against the president ten years
earlier and was subsequently executed with the rest of those involved in the
coup. According to her, her husband was captured in the night by the
government forces at their residence. She was shot at in the melee of the arrest,
lost her pregnancy in the process and, subsequently, the use of her legs as a
result of a broken pelvis which later confined her to the wheelchair.
Throughout the play, Taiwo allows herself the liberty of pointing to the readeraudience the various short-comings of each of the sisters and the men in their
lives.
Nana is the illegitimate daughter of Ambassador. At age sixty-two, she
is the eldest of four sisters, however, her identity as a blood member of the
ambassador’s family is unknown by the other sisters who believe her to be a
maid until the end of the play. She is docile and dedicates forty-three years of
her life to the service of her other sisters without complaints, having promised
Ambassadors wife shortly before her death that she would take care of them.
Nana is the symbol of uprightness and the strength of her sisters:
Nana: It is funny how we pick all this sadness,
Taiwo: How profound. Nana, how long have you been with us? You
always said and done the right things. Always.
Funmi: She has been my rock. 482
To all of the sisters, Nana is their source of defence. Funmi says, “She has been
my rock” because Nana becomes her strength, help and comfort in time of
distress. By referring to Nana as “rock”, Funmi invariably equates her with God
in her life. A quick look at the Christian Bible reveals at least four instances in
the Book of Psalms where we can find references to God as “My rock.” 483
Yerima’s concern in most of his plays seems to be the socio-political effect the
message embedded in them will have on the consciousness of the readeraudience and not on the development of a single character. This may have been
the reasoning behind individual characters; characters whose actions and
speeches can directly affect the reader-audience.
The characters of The Sisters and The Lottery Ticket are used to satirize
the hypocritical nature of human being no matter his status in society. It is
possible that many on the lower rung of society are more fraudulent, greedier
482
Yerima, The Sisters, 26-27
See The Book of Psalms 18 verse 2 and 46; Psalms 28 verse 1; 31 verse 3; 42 verse 9; 62
verse 2 and 6; 71 verse 3; and 92 verse 15. In The Holy Bible
483
159
than the political elite whom they blame for their present status. As situations in
The Lottery Ticket reveal, many of them lack human compassion. The Lottery
Ticket has seven characters that ably represent the lower class of the Nigerian
society: Mama Lizi, an illiterate operator of a shanty-eating parlour is a fiftyyear-old woman. She is strong, zealous in her business, and interested in any
venture that will give her more money. Lizi, the daughter, is eighteen years old
and helps her mother at her food vending business. She is a self-professed
Christian, yet she befriends Danger, a notorious criminal. She is a trained tailor
and more intelligent than her mother. Landlord is a sixty-year-old retired civil
servant and the owner of the house where Mama Lizi and her daughter reside.
He also operates their shanty-restaurant. He is greedy, corrupt and lacks human
compassion. To Landlord, money is more important than human life. Yellow
Fever, a traffic officer, and Sajent, a police personnel, are two law enforcement
officers.
The characters of Yellow Fever and Sajent are a true reflection of the
negative aspect of Nigerian security force. The two of them are corrupt officers
who prefer to be paid by criminals rather than arresting them. Instead of Yellow
Fevertelling the circumstances that leads to Danger’s death, he collaborates
with Mama Lizi to give a false account of the event. Sajent demands that if he
is paid, he will not report Danger’s death as murder. This means that the
murder suspects will not be arrested because he (Sajent) will provide them the
needed alibi:
Sajent: Now, now. I want una to know say I be gazetted Police Sajent.
If not to say book don spoil we country, I for don be ASP or even DSP,
but na as God want am so. Dis case simple, but e fit hard. All dey for
una hand. If una see me well, na as una talk and wan do am, na so
gofment go take hear am. (SE 484: Right now. I will like you to know that
I am a confirmed Police Sergeant. I would have been made an
Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) or Deputy Superintendent of
Police (DSP), except that everything goes to those who are well
educated in this country, however, this is the way God as planned it.
The issue here is simple, but it can be made serious. It all depends on
you. If you pay well, things will be the way you said it is, I will report it
to the government like that.)
Landlord: ... Oga Sajent, how much you want? (SE: Sergeant boss, how
much do you want?)
484
SE is Standardized English
160
Sajent: Good una get sense. Each dead body na three hundred naira.
Say I come look for them, two hundred naira.485 (SE: Good you all are
sensible. Each of the corpse cost three hundred. You have to pay
another Two hundred naira because I found them here.)
Within the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) is what we can refer to as “systemic
corruption.” 486 Many of the leaders of the force are corrupt, thereby, affecting
the other personel’s moral for uprightness. Sajent (Sergeant) is the
representation of systemic corruption within the Nigerian Police Force. He sets
a price on criminal cases: the seriousness of the crime determines the price in
financial terms:
Sajent: Wait, den say I write the report, another two hundred naira. One
thousand naira na him I go collect for dis case.487 (SE: Stop, the fact
that I write the report, another two hundred. I must be paid One
thousand naira for this very case.)
Sajent will also set a price on his service as the police officer in charge of the
case involving two murder victims. The One thousand Naira (N1000.00)
equivalent of $10 is to cover the cost of each of the victims set at three
hundred, two hundred for his effort of discovering the bodies himself and the
remaining two hundred naira in order for him to write a report that will
exonerate the suspects rather than indict them. Danger and Baba Tailor are the
two remaining characters of the play. Danger, a young man of twenty years old,
is a violent criminalwhose stocks-in-trade are robbery and assault. He is a
representation of the decay and violence that the unemployed youth of Nigeria
have become associated with. Danger just as his name typifies, has no regard
for anyone except Lizi, his girlfriend, whom he calls “my sweet potato.” 488 Lizi
is the only person that can calm his raging spirit, especially when he becomes
violent. He patronizes prostitutes, and he is always ready to kill for any
amount:
485
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 46
Robert Klitgaard says that the term is used to distinguish two situations. One is where some
people are corrupt. Another is where many people are corrupt—where the system itself has
grown sick. The situation in Nigeria is that NPF as grown sick. See Klitgaard, Robert,
“Leadership Under Systemic Corruption” a paper presented to six Mekong Delta countries at a
summit meeting in Vientiane, Laos, December 2004
http://www.cgu.edu/include/Leadership_Under_System_Corruption_12-04.pdf
487
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 47
488
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 21
486
161
Danger: Na not-nine-not self even tug go dey use. I fit just hold the
telefon say make dem wet one man with petrol, or burn one opponent
shop. I tell you tief na tief. As politics dey go nuclear, na so tug work
go go nuclear. As my man dey swear oath to chop Nigeria for Aso rock
na so me too go dey swear to chop de man. 489 (SE: Criminal will use
mobile 090 mobile phone line. I might use the phone to command my
boys to pour fuel on a political opponent’s shop. A thief is a thief. In as
much as politics is becoming vibrant, so is criminality. Just as my
political boss is taking his oath of office in Aso Rock to drain Nigeria
of its wealth, I will also take my own oath to drain the man of his loot.)
Danger becomes a ready tool in the hands of unscrupulous Nigerian politicians
to perpetuate their nefarious deeds of killing, maiming and destroying political
rivals. As Danger rightly points out, Nigerian political leaders’ oath of office is
geared towards “... to chop Nigeria for Aso rock...” 490 In this case since Aso
Rock is the official resident of the Nigerian president, Danger is saying that
those who have been occupying this position are thieves whose sole purpose in
government is to steal the wealth of the country. Danger’s death in the play
suggests that crime and hooliganism will come to an end only when the people
collectively rise against it. Baba Tailor is a seventy-year-old sickly tailor whose
uprightness is rewarded with the winning prize of the Tuba Cola Lottery. As a
sickly and good hearted-man, his character represents agreat deal of poverty.
His presumed death by the other characters in the play put a new twist to the
narration. At their supposition, the greed in the other characters manifests: even
Baba Tailor who suddenly regains consciousness, heightened the greed in all
the characters when the first thing said by him is “Wey my ticket? Where I put
am? 491 (SE: Where is my ticket? Where did I drop it?)
Language
In his plays, language is used to represent the multi-layered Nigerian society;
he gives expression to a sense of increasing disgust and unrest within its
population. The language in The Lottery Ticket is the popular Nigerian Pidgin
English or NPE, a synthesized or creolized style of the English language. It is
popular in Nigeria because it is spoken by almost all of the population. The
language allows for the inclusion of indigenous languages into a simplified
489
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 29
SE: To embezzle Nigeria’s wealth at the government’s official residence.
491
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 50
490
162
English language in order to give the speaker ease of expression and
comprehension of communication among the various strata of the Nigerian
society. In order to reach a new audience in theatre,492 Yerima adopted the
synthesized English language (NPE), which Biodun Jeyifo had observed earlier
in some of Wole Soyinka’s plays:
Perhaps the most impressive of Soyinka’s feats of entering into,
inhabiting and then appropriating the “languages” internal to a
particular social group that is distant from his own middle-class
background are to be encountered in The Road and From Zia with
Love. In both plays, there is a complete hermeticization of the milieu of
the lumpen, semi-employed and working class characters, together with
the “world” of their social and demographic neighbor, the criminal
underclass of extortion racketeers, jailbird felons and petty crooks.
Indeed, on the strength of these two plays, not to talk of the two “Jero
Plays” Soyinka must be ranked with the late Ken Saro-Wiwa as one of
the two most accomplished creative translators of West African
[P]idgin English into a highly nuanced literary language. 493
Nigeria is a nation of diverse ethnic nationalities and languages (in the excess
of 300 different tongues) with very high numbers of non-English language
speakers. The synthesized English breaks the ethnic gulf and also allows for
barrier breakage between the high and the low within the society. For citizens
without formal education or easy access to higher education (even those with
higher education), picking up a few words of English and mixing it with
elements of their native tongues has been a much easier way of communicating
across cultures and class.
Average Nigerians look at Pidgin English as a recognized language in
its own right, with sufficient differences in vocabulary and structure which
distinguish it from standardized English. Ogaga Okuyade believes that Nigerian
“Pidgin English is the medium of expression, a language whose syntax is
wholly African, while most of its vocabulary is premised on lexical borrowing
492
It is argued by some African theatre scholars that the elitist nature and over dependence on
sophisticated English language by the continent’s literary dramatists are parts of the many
reasons for the low attendance at theatre venues in Nigeria.
493
Jeyifo, Biodun, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 103
163
from English and indigenous languages.” 494 The beauty of the language is that
it is fluid and does not follow any stylistic form or rigid structure. There is no
doubt that a form of pidgin language may have evolved between the Yoruba,
Benin and their earlier European traders like the Portuguese, with whom they
came in contact in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in order to facilitate
effective trading relations. K.U. Ihemere believes that words like Sabi (know)
and Pikin (child) 495 found in the contemporary NPE have a Portuguese origin.
Based on my little knowledge of the French language, I have also discovered
that words like Boku (much/many) have a French origin. Pidgin English on its
own had a long history with Nigerians having been adopted as far back as the
early nineteenth century. 496
The present NPE, however, became popular in Nigerian literature
through the works of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe at the turn of the 1960s
and in music by the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti Afrobeat music creator in the late
1960s. If we take into reckoning the year of publication for Wole Soyinka’s
The Trials of Brother Jero (1960) and The Road (1965), and Chinua Achebe’s
Man of the People (1967) that are written in NPE, then one can justifiably
creditthese two writers as the first set of people to document the language for
popular culture and not Fela Anikulapo-Kuti whose Afrobeat music did not
appear until late 1960s or Ken Saro-Wiwa whose writing career commenced in
the 1970s and, as claimed by some critics497, brought NPE language to
international limelight. For elucidation I will reproduce Samson’s speech from
The Road which brand of Pidgin English contains Yoruba, pidgin and many
other English varieties:
494
Ogaga, Okuyade,“Recent Nigerian Bards and Minstrels: Forms of Counter Narratives” in
California Linguistic Notes, Vol. 35, No. 2, Spring 2010 (online)
495
Ihemere, K.U., “A Basic Desription and Analytic Treatment of Noun Clauses in Nigerian
Pidgin” in Nordic Journal of African Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, (2006), 296-313. After I
crosschecked these two Portuguese words against English, I discovered that Sabi is saber and
there is no such word as Pikin in Portuguese language.
496
Magnus Hubber calls this form of language English-lexicon Jargon which is likely to have
developed in Western Nigeria in the 1860s with the establishment of the Lagos colony and the
increased presence of the Anglophone Europeans officials. Hubber, M., Ghanaian Pidgin
English in its West African Context: A Sociohistorical and Structural Analysis (Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamin B.V., 1999), 125
497
Ahmed Yerima in his Discourse on Tragedy (2009, 60) writes that Fela Anikulapo-Kuti
popularized the language while Biodun Jeyifo, which I have quoted above recognizes Ken SaroWiwa and Wole Soyinka as the two most accomplished translator of NPE. Achebe and Soyinka’s
use of NPE is limited to specific characters in their work, wereas in Saro-wiwa’s works, all the
characters speak the NPE.
164
Samson: Sisi! A-ah. Sisi o. Sisi wey fine reach so na only bus wey fine
like we own fit carry am. Wetin now sisi? Oh your portamentaeu, I
done put am inside bus. Yes, certainly. We na quick service, we na
senior service...Oyo, mama, we done ready for go now now. Come-o
come now. Service na first class, everything provided. If you want' pee
we go stop. No delay!
In the drama of Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi and others that later emerged from
Nigeria after this first generation playwrights, NPE becomes a meansto
distinguish between the literate or sophisticated characters and the illiterate,
most especially the house-help or market women’s characters, for example,
Polycarp the house boy of Lejoka Brown in Ola Rotimi’s Our Husband Has
Gone Mad Again, and Chume, Jero’s assistant in Soyinka’s Jero Plays. The
language also distinguishes the criminal underclass of extortion racketeers,
jailbird felons, thugs and petty crooks like Danger in The Lottery Ticket. In the
long playing album titled, “Unlimited Liability Company” 498 which also
featured in the film Blues for a Prodigal (1984), Soyinka composed the song in
Pidgin English and had it recorded:
I love my country
I love my country
I no go lie
I will not lie
Na inside am I go live and I die
I will live and die in it
A no my country
I am aware of my country
A no go lie
I will not lie
Na him and me go yab till I die
myself and my country shall argue
until I die
Yerima incorporated this song also in Kaffir’s Last Game 499, and he adopted
the same style in the composition of the Tuba Cola promotional advert in The
Lottery Ticket:
498
The songs in the album are written by Wole Soyinka who also produced them through his
company Ewuro Production, however, it has the voice of Tunji Oyelana and his musical group
The Benders. Ewuro Productions also produced the film Blues for a Prodigal
499
Yerima, Ahmed, Kaffir’s Last Game, 25
165
“Tuba Cola don come again oh!
Yeah! Come see naira, yanfu yanfu
Tuba Cola has arrived again
Come and see naira in large
amount
One hundred thousand naira Naira rain dey fall oh!
Naira rain is falling
“Tuba Cola don come oh!
Tuba Cola has arrived
Na today we go know oh!
We will know today
All the people wey don buy lottery ticket
Those who already bought the lottery
ticket
Na today result go come out for ten o’clock
The result will be out today at
10 o’clock
Woman, men, pikin wey dey drink Tuba
Women, men and child that drinks
Tuba Cola go collect plenty money
Tuba Cola will get a lot of money
Buy one bottle collect plenty money Buy one bottle, receive a lot of
money
Yerima, aware of the popularity of NPE as a tool for effective communication
and the class of people who frequently utilize it in everyday conversation with
comical rendition without inhibition, put the reader-audience in a hilarious
mood from the opening of the play with the Tuba Cola lottery jingle. Yerima’s
use of language buttresses my earlier statement that NPE is a barrier breaker
which did not distinguish between classes and educational attainment of
speakers; Yerima belongs to the upper middle-class of the Nigerian society.
Having been to the university, schooled at a prestigious college in the UK, a
university lecturer and Director-General of the National Theatre, a political
appointee, ought to remove Yerima from the level of NPE speakers. However,
this is never the case. One can argue that since NPE language is very popular
within Nigerian universities, he may have picked it up from there or from the
popular place of convergence “Abe Igi” (under the trees) at the National
Theatre. Yerima explained that in being a child of a police officer, it was a
must for him to understand NPE because it is the language spoken in Nigerian
police barracks. Therefore, anyone who grew up in that environment is bound
166
to speak it. 500 His realistic presentation of the market and street language is
exceptional, more flexible, musical and highly developed. Take for instance the
dialogue between Mama Lizi, Lizi and Landlord:
Mama Lizi: But Tuba Cola people get sense. Dey wan sell plenty, den
dem go give people one hundred thousand naira. See wayo. Dat one na
money? Dey don make millions well well, den dem go give us only
hundred thousand. Everybody na tief for dis kontri. Dey just dey
punish poor man.
Landlord: Madam na money o. Nobody force anybody. Na you get
your money, na you drink am.
Mama Lizi: Ha Oga Landlord. You wey God don bless. You get house
for Lagos, you dey collect money, wetin you wan take hundred
thousand naira do?
Landlord: I go take am marry your Lizi. I don old, I need small girl
wey go dey rob my back till I die.
Mama Lizi: Heeh, so na your hidden aganda be dat? Men self, wayo
full una head.
Lizi: God forbid.
Landlord: Wetin God wan forbid? E good say since my wife run
commot for house run follow that yeye 419 boy wey god don soda him
yansh, e good say make I sit down dey look ayanyan? …Lizi good. Na
you go bury me.
Lizi: I say God forbid. I no go bury oldman. God forbid! No be me go
do replacement wife for you. You dey forget say I train as tailor. 501
This triangular conversation is full of witty remarks, puns, innuendoes and
hyperbolic statements on the part of the Landlord and Mama Lizi. These
figures of speech enhance the comical nature of the play. When Mama Lizi
asks what Landlord is going to do with a Hundred Thousand Naira
(N100,000.00) an equivalent of Six Hundred and Fifty-five United State dollars
($655), Landlord, who had been lusting after Lizi promptly responds with “I go
take am marry your Lizi.” 502 Landlord’s quick response was not lost on Mama
Lizi who also accused him of nursing such a hidden agenda all along and
ranking all men together to be full of deceit:
500
The statement was made during an interview with this writer on 10thNovember, 2011 at
Redeemer’s University (RUN), Nigeria.
501
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 10-11
502
SE: I will marry Lizzie with the money.
167
Heeh, so na your hidden aganda be dat? Men self, wayo full una
head 503. (SE: You mean that is your hidden plan?)
Lizi rejects Landlord’s offer of marriage and he goes into the story of how his
wife left him to go after a useless fraudster “yeye 419 boy” (stupid fraudster).
Other comical words used by Landlord here include “god don soda him yansh”
(god has sealed his anus), and “ayanyan” (empty space). Being aware through
experience of how to get the attention of Lizi and her mother, Landlord reveals
his intention for mother and daughter, a plan that he has no desire to fulfill:
…Na him I dey talk, if you gree my own, when I win I go pay your
dowry. We no go go church. I go drive Electrician commot the shop
wey dey Ebute-Metta. I go put you there. I go buy you Tokunbo
sewing machine and your mama no go pay rent again. 504 (SE: That is
what I am talking about, if you agreed to be my wife, I will pay your
dowry when I win the lottery. We don’t have to go to Church. I will
send the Electrical worker in the Shop at Ebute-Metta away. You will
occupy the space. Then I will buy a used sewing machine for you, then
you mother will cease to pay rent for this space she occupies.)
This bait which Mama Lizi easily falls for does not elicit equal reaction from
Lizi who is already in love with Danger, a noted chronic criminal. She only
said Landlord should first of all win the lottery before making plans of
marrying her. Landlord who is very optimistic of winning the lottery after
collecting eight packets of tickets, wants to marry Lizi with the winnings:
Lizi: (Lizi walks to him) Make I bring your food? (SE: Shall I bring
your meal now?)
Landlord: Yes Sugar!
Lizi: Na as you chop am yesterday? (SE: Do you want it the same way
you ate it yesterday?)
Landlord: Yes honey!
Lizi: Water? Or Tuba Cola?
Landlord: Tuba Cola, Orange Banana of my nose. 505
503
This is a Hausa word meaning deceit.
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 11
505
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 14
504
168
Landlord employs every known trick within his domain to entice Lizi, even
referring to her as his most loved fruit. Jargon is used to elicit laughter from the
reader-audience. Of course, Landlord’s intension is not lost on Lizi, so she
insisted that he should win the lottery first. When he realizes that Lizi is not
ready to leave her boyfriend, Danger, Landlord changes his approach by
warning her of the danger in going ahead to commit her life to a common
criminal:
Lizi wetin you think? No dig hole wey rabbit no dey. I be sure banka
make you follow me o. you wan suffer follow that tief tief boy. Man
wey dem dey call Danger na man? 506 (SE: Lizi, what do you think? Do
not embark on a fruitless venture. It is certain I will win you need to
come with me. You will be badly treated by the criminal you are
following. Is the man called Danger a person?)
Two important statements in the speech are: “No dig hole wey rabbit no
dey” 507, and “Man wey dem dey call Danger na man?” 508 The first one is a
figurative expression used in advising someone not to embark on pointless
venture, while the second one is a rhetorical question. The first “man” is used
in its literary sense whereas the second “man” is in relation to the word danger
as not being human. The conversation between Landlord, Mama Lizi, and Baba
Tailor is even more hilarious. Though it relates to death and sickness, one still
feels the lightness at which it is discussed:
Baba Tailor: I sick no be small. (SE: I had a terrible sickness)
Landlord: Na die we even hear. (SE: We heard that you died)
Baba Tailor: I die, but God no call am my time. I see death, na man. I
see my mama and papa, dem dey call me. Adolfos come. Na him I
remember my shop. I say I still get mission and I refuse to follow
them. 509
(SE: I died, but God says it is not my turn yet. I saw death, it is a male.
I saw my mother and father, they both called me by my name, Adolfos.
However, I remember my shop. And I told them I have a mission on
earth, so, I refused to go with them.)
506
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 14
The meaning of the statement is, “do not embark on a fruitless venture.”
508
The meaning of the question is, “man that people refers to as Danger is not a human-being.”
509
Yerima, Ahmed, The Lottery Ticket, 16
507
169
Mama Lizi was quick to ask from Baba Tailor if it is possible for a dead person
to recognize anybody in heaven, to which the man responded in the affirmative.
Baba Tailor described his experiences in “the supposed visitation” heaven as
pleasant since the place is pleasant and sweet to be at. Here, I think Baba Tailor
is only re-echoing what the Bible 510 says concerning heaven as a place of
happiness. Mama Lizi, not satisfied with Baba Tailor’s response, retorted:
Eeh if death sweet why you no kuku die well now? Shebi you for just
leave all dis wahala die well well. You say you get mission. Dey
deceive yourself. Which mission poor man dey get pass suffer head? 511
(SE: But if truly death is pleasant, why did you not die finally? It means
that you would have left this earth with its numerous problems.)
She is not being unnecessarily hard on Baba Tailor, but re-echoing a normal
response that would have come from an average Nigerian within the social
class being discussed. That is “If the state of death is as sweet as you
proclaimed, why come back to earth”? “Suffer head” is used to explain a state
of poverty. One will have to say that Mama Lizi’s remark to Baba Tailor is
later justified when he (Baba Tailor) starts to list the different kinds of sickness
he is diagnosed to be suffering from:
Diabetis, atiritis, hanpertension, high blood pressure and heart
problem 512 (SE: Diabetes, arthritis, hypertension.)
Mama Lizi again reprimands Baba Tailor for leaving heaven to come back to
earth:
I say wetin come remain for life for you? If Doctor tell me say I get all
dis sickness and my mama dey call me for heaven, I for kuku stay. 513
(SE: I repeat what else do you have on earth? If a doctor diagnosed
that I am suffering from the entire ailment you mentioned, and my
mother beckons to me in heaven, I will stay with her.)
510
See John accounts in the book of Revelation, and Jesus Christ words on the many mansions in
heaven in the book of John 14.2
511
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 16
512
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 16
513
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 17
170
Landlord introduces a humorous dimension to the sickness by giving a
perceived general analysis of the sickness and causes:
See heen, diabetes na wen bigman don chop many sweet things. Atiritis
na wen bigman sidown dey drive moto dey chase women. Which moto
you get, pass pasenja for molue bus? Herpatension na wen you wori for
account wey dey London, you wey be say na ajo you dey do. High
blood na wen life sweet bigman and everything wey him dey do na
highlife, e chop leg of chicken, he chop woman leg, wash am with
odeku (All laugh at Landlord’s analysis) 514 (SE: You need to know that
diabetes affects wealthy individuasl who lives life indulging in sweet
foods. Arthritis affects the wealthy individual who spends most of his
days sitting in a car chasing after women. What kind of car do you
have that is more than a seat in a public transport bus? Hypertension
comes when you give in to too much worrying about your savings
account in London, but you only make a daily contribution to the thrift
collector. High blood pressure only comes when a wealthy individual
enjoys life to the maximum by eating chicken laps, woman laps, and
relax with stout beer.)
Landlord and Mama Lizi laugh at the sicknesses (Arthritis, Hypertension,
Diabetes, High blood pressure and heart problem), which they both perceive as
being meant to affect wealthy individuals, therefore, for Baba Tailor to be
plagued by them, he must be a very wealthy man (bigman) in God’s sight. The
man (Baba Taylor) is quick to inform them that he owes bills at the hospital
including the bills of some food vendors who had assisted with food while he
was in the hospital. Landlord interprets Baba Tailor’s sickness from the
perspective of a deprived class of society: you can only develop hypertension
when you constantly think of your bank accounts overseas, and to him, Baba
Tailor’s bank account is little daily contributions done in the market.
In Nigeria there are thrift collectors who go to food vendors, small
traders and market women collecting some amount of money from them as a
daily savings which they can always get back at the end of the month or
whenever the need for it arises. This is the circumstance that Landlord refers to.
He explains further that in order to be diagnosed with high blood pressure, the
victim must be in the habit of excessive eating of chicken, sleeping around with
women and drinking beers. Of course to the poor illiterate members of the
514
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 17
171
lower class of the Nigerian society, the rich are plagued with many sicknesses
because they indulge themselves a great deal without care for their health.
Danger’s NPE has fluidity, and it often means the reverse of what is stated. For
example: “Oga Landlord. Alaye Baba, my rice and beans dey your hand this
morning o” 515, would be translated, “Landlord, the boss. Area Father, the owner
of the world, my meal this morning is in your hand”, however the NPE means
more than we have in English. Danger merely uses the words boss and owners
of the world to praise Landlord expecting him to be drawn into the flattery
before telling him that he (Landlord) is to pay for the food he (Danger) will be
eating that morning. Conversely, the language in The Sisters and Kaffir’s Last
Game is elevated. The language is of highly educated characters laden with
poetry, metaphor, sarcasm, allusion and other figurative expressions, even with
philosophy. The language of most of these plays is determined by the social
class of the characters. The three sisters are children of an ambassador, well
educated (attended prestigious high schools and universities in England), and
one of them is the widow of the late president. The language is not localized
like we have in Little Drops and Mojagbe, or in Yerima’s historical dramas like
The Trials of Oba Ovonramwen, Attahiru and Ameh Oboni The Great,
discussed in chapter two. Although we have, especially in Kaffir’s Last Game,
some words in both Afrikaan and Yoruba, these were meant to remind the
reader-audience of the setting of the play and the background of the characters.
The deployment of sarcasm in Kaffir’s Last Game and The Lottery Ticket is
intended to deride the human’s hypocritical attitude and recourse to religious
obligations, prayers and supplications to God. Nigerian type of Pentecostal
Christianity is the most common brand of Christianity in Africa. Nigerian
pastors are quick to establish churches wherever they are found in Africa,
Europe or America. For example, Redeemed Christian Church of God and
Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministry, two of Nigerian’s fastest growing
churches, have a presence in Australia, North and South America, Europe, and
in many countries of Africa. Professor is quick to refer to these activities in
Kaffir’s Last Game as a product being exported from Nigeria:
Professor: In fact, after oil, it is the recent second most popular product
being shipped for export. And we are well-organized about it too. After
committing all atrocities from Monday to Thursday, we spend Fridays
and Sundays praying. We have so many churches, mosques and
515
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 21
172
shrines. Sometimes I wonder how god has escaped being confused by
our numerous supplications. 516
And Lizi comments in The Lottery Ticket “…Dey no wan work dem dey wait
make Jesus come put water for them gari.” 517 From the opening of The Sisters
we are introduced to Taiwo’s poetry which is very rich in imagery and
metaphor. For example:
Dark embers of my inner soul
The drink lobes of sadness pour.
Melting, pelting …dropping drops of tears
Wrapped once in stately glory,
Now naked in cloves of sorrow …pity!
(Pauses, looks around
Oh the drink lobes of the rich and powerful
Must now tilt to pour out …pour out
The innocence of a shaded life
Now searching for pity
Where there is none…pity! 518
I decided to write down the whole poem as Taiwo renders it in order to point
out how Yerima departs from his simple and straight forward approach to
dramatic dialogue to create deeper meaning with simple words and images. The
first three lines of the poem convey the sadness that Taiwo harboured for years
after the execution of her husband at the order of the president. The later part of
the poem makes mockery of Funmi’s expectations of pity at the death of her
husband. She ends the poem with confirmation that she has no pity for Funmi
in her state of loss. Taiwo is happy that the president died. The first two lines of
the poem referto Taiwo’s long period of solitary grief, while line eight to ten
refer to her current state of mind:
The innocence of a shaded life
Now searching for pity
Where there is none…pity 519
516
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 33
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 20. SE: The people do not want to work, but await Jesus Christ to
put food on their table.
518
Yerima, The Sisters, 9
519
Yerima, The Sisters, 9
517
173
Taiwo sees the death of the president as her personal triumph as she blamedhim
for her many woes. The night that her husband was picked-up by the military
for execution, she was shot at and the bullet broke her pelvis. From that
moment she lost the use of her legs. At the hospital, neither Funmi nor the
president visited her or payed for the treatment. By ordering the killing of her
husband years earlier, the President brought Taiwo her untold sorrow:
I am sorry again. Besides, I did not want anyone to share in my
supreme moment of glory. God had handed over the moment to me,
and in triumph, I scribbled …death …oh death …which breaks through
the mighty walls …of Egypt. Treks down the well-paved road to
Jericho only to snap the neck of the almighty. 520
Having used Taiwo’s speech to describe the kind of language in The Sisters, let
us examine Professor’s and Mbulelo’s dialogue in Kaffir’s Last Game:
Mbulelo: I am sorry, but let me get this clear …you mean that you a
Professor of Political Science trained at Oxford, London and
Cambridge lost your wife to a lottery ticket?
Professor: No, to an America Professor. My God these American
people …
Mbulelo: Permit me to cut in, Professsor. The Americans are not a
people. They have lost that status and description. They are just
Americans. If you think of them just as Americans, then their action
will never hurt. Look at Libya. Even now they want to tell President
Mandela who to shake or visit. I tell you they are not a people. 521
Mbulelo equates Americans with their country. The understanding in many
African countries is that the United States of America (USA) controls the
economy and political sphere of Africa. Mbulelo’s reference to Libya is in
relation to the sanctions that the US placed on the country from 1980s to 2000s.
Both Mbulelo and Professor believe that, in order for your country to enjoy the
support of the government of USA, your nation’s president must maintain
relations only with nations that are in good relationship with the US.
520
521
Yerima, The Sisters, 11
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 17
174
Professor: They also did that to us. And our government cannot
stomach their political machinations and intrigues also. The African
[p]residents, no matter what aids they get, must begin to assert
themselves. 522
In Little Drops, neither the terror activities of the various militant groups in the
Niger Delta nor that of the Nigerian Military Joint Task Force (JTF) is
shrouded in metaphors like we have in Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground or
Akpos Adesi’s Agadagba Warriors and other plays about Nigeria’s sociopolitical landscape. 523 For example, the militant boys blew up oil refineries and
killed their own people including leaders in Little Drops. In Niger Delta, there
was constant bombing of oil installations, and kidnapping of expatriate oil
workers for ransom. All these are captured in Little Drops. He uses Azue’s
description of how the militants beheaded their king to reveal that the groups
have constituted themselves into an uncontrollable institution of terror: “They
cut off the head of the king right in front of his family.” 524 Azue shows her
grief not by simple words but through the gory picture of the king’s death:
Azue: …the king died like an animal at the shrines. The eyes of his
headless body still twitched with life. His stomach rising and falling as
blood gushed out from his headless neck….No man deserved to have
died like that. They killed him like an animal for sacrifice. 525
The horrid image of death and mangled bodies in Little Drops is distressing to
both the actors and the play’s reader-audience; however it enhances the tragic
mood of the play. Let us take for instance, Bonuwo’s psychological wellbeing
when she lost her students:
…I ran out when I heard screams and shouts. First, it was like a bad
dream. The roof of my classroom was blown open. Huge smoke and
heavy smell of charred skin and burnt flesh. Not one soul … not one
child was spared. All we saw were cut off limbs, little trunks, cut off
heads, with their hair still burning ….forty-one of them …all dead.526
522
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 17
In Hard Ground and Agadagba Warriors, there is no direct mention of Nigeria or JTF.
524
Yerima, Little Drops, 22
525
Yerima, Little Drops, 23-24
526
Yerima, Little Drops, 39
523
175
Bonuwo ran out of the toilet on hearing agonizing screams. She saw what used
to be a classroom now turned into an open field. Psychologically, she became
unbalanced. The burnt flesh and charred skin, cut off limbs, and heads of fortyone innocent children-who were unaware of the ongoing war or the cause of it
or whose war it is anyway-churned her stomach. Bonuwo’s predicament did not
end with the experience of the bomb blast; the parents of the murdered children
blamed her for their children’s death. This must have accounted for her seeing
the images of the slain children at a point in the play. Bonuwo’s description of
the manner of death of the children provoked the humanness of the audience
who saw the play when it was premiered in Lagos. 527 Memekize recounts her
ordeal with a gory description of how she lost all her family in one day as a
poor fisherwoman in the swamp of the Niger Delta during the Nigerian Civil
War which claimed over a million people between 1967 and 1970:
Memekize: All my blood. My husband and two sons. They all perished
the same day. During the Biafran war ...unknown to us there was a war.
How were we to know in this swampy bush? As they jumped in and
out of the river, diving…checking the nets …dugum! A shell. It tore
them to pieces. I never picked one complete. I found a head there …a
limb here …a toe …a finger …a manacled trunks. In the rain, I picked
each piece until I had each wooden box full.528
Memekize’s reference to the Nigerian Civil War is to tell us that Nigeria as a
country is not new to carnage and war, perpetrated by political leaders as an
alternative for a peaceful dialogue approach to conflict management or
resolution. Her plight further highlights the point that, in the event of war, the
victims are mostly civilians who have no knowledge of the cause of the war. If
Mukume suffers rape three times in Little Drops, and the other women and
children suffered uncountable humiliation and deprivation in the hands of their
perceived revolutionists, then it is important for me to ask: “Who are the
militants fighting for?” The militants themselves are quick to respond that they
are fighting for the people, especially the women, children and youths. The
actions of the militant groups confuse the women and children they claim to be
protecting. In the play we have these two positions interpreted by Ovievie and
Kuru:
527
The play was premiered in November, 2009 at the Nigerian National Theatre, Lagos. In the
audience were many high school and university students. I saw many of the audience crying
during the performance, especially during Bonuwo and Azue’s speech.
528
Yerima, Little Drops, 34
176
Ovievie: ….No. There was no way one could seat on the fence. No.
You could not watch the world exploit your people. With so much
neglect, you could not turn your face away. We all felt a sense of duty.
We had to fight. 529
On the other hand, the militant leader Kuru believes that the women should be
active in the fight against the Nigerian Government and the oil multi-nationals
or else he will kill them:
…Shoo! Is this a women colony? Wake them up. We men are fighting,
you women are sleeping. Wake up the stupid fools!530
….I will skin you all alive, hang you upside down on a pole each, and
prick a little hole in your chest until you all die by dropping little drops
of blood to the progress and development of the Niger Delta
Republic….We are at war out there. Dying for you! But here you are.
(Look around.) Eating water yam. 531
Yerima seems to be saying that Kuru stands as symbol for the militants whose
concern is the achievement of a Niger Delta Republic. To actualize this desire,
they find thatthe deaths of both children and women are justified andinevitable.
On the contrary, the Niger Delta women choose peace instead of war, life
instead of death; because they are aware that, in the course of wars, the female
gender is hardest hit: “We have not sent anyone to kill and die for us. We want
peace. We are tired of burying our beloved ones….” 532 The effect of the Niger
Delta militants’ activities against women is not different from what female
groups encounter under any war situation. The women’s psychological integrity
is often destroyed by heinous acts such as rape and other sexual violence which
often results in unwanted pregnancies and enforced termination of pregnancy.
Women are most often seen as loot of war and the instrument of pleasure for
the male fighters. Even under the Niger Delta insurgency when the militants are
“paid ransom for the release of the kidnapped, they spend it partying with
young women.” 533 So, according to Memekize, “...women and the innocent
children will always lose their lives.” 534 The International Committee of the
529
Yerima, Little Drops, 48
Yerima, Little Drops, 51
531
Yerima, Little Drops, 52
532
Yerima, Little Drops, 52
533
Yerima, Little Drops, 21
534
Yerima, Little Drops, 63
530
177
Red Cross organization writes that women are, in most part, the civilian
“caught in the crossfire, and show astonishing resourcefulness and resilience in
coping with the disintegration of their families, the loss of their homes and their
belongings and the destruction of their lives.” 535
The details of death in the play literarily present horrific images that
are often seen in scenes of Hollywood war movies, terrorist actions in the
streets of Iraq, or the outcome of an explosion that rocked Moscow
Domodedovo airport on January 24, 2011. 536 They present a devilment angle to
humanity’s insane application of power. The action removes from the
perpetrators any ounce of humanity they once might have had. In Little Drops,
the reader-audience relates with death not in its orthodox form, but as a tragic
end to existence and also as an instrument of destruction of innocent lives.
Death becomes the method for settling resource control issues both by the
Nigerian government and the militants. Whatever sympathy the readeraudience might have felt towards the militants disappears by their continual
killings. I think this is what Yerima’s Little Drops wants to achieve. The play
puts the blame of the conflicts and the carnage that follows on the militants and
exonerates the Nigerian government to a large extent. However, while the
militants are the people responsible for the killing of the king in Little Drop, the
Joint Military Taskforce who launches a grenade attack on the militants are
responsible for the massacre of innocent children.
The language of the play shocks, affects and effects an offensive
emotional reaction that necessitated an unsympathetic condemnation of both
the actions of the militants and the government forces by the reader-audience.
Memekize’s recounts of her loss inthe Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s that
confines her to the same spot for forty years after the incident employs
language not different from the others in the play. The reference to the manner
in which the King died like sacrificial animals at shrines is too atrocious. I
think Yerima’s use of the statement “The eyes of his headless body still
twitched with life” and the description of thedeath of the children is aimed at
telling the warring parties that they have thrown away the little humanity
existingin them.
535
See paragraph two of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) official statement
Vasilyeva, N., Sekretarev, I., “Moscow airport terror attack kills 31, wounds 145”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_airport_blast
536
178
Thematic Pre-occupation
Gender abuse is one of the major themes in The Sisters, Little Drops and
Mojagbe. All of the women in these plays are denied one right or another. For
example, Funmi, the first lady in The Sisters, suffers the agony of the loss of
her sisters’ companionship when the president was alive. Her husband
prevented her from visiting Taiwo in the hospital when she received a bullet to
her pelvis. She could not commiserate with her on the death of her husband.
Nana was treated by her Father the Ambassador and his wife as a servant rather
than as a member of the family. This is the reason why Ambassador’s wife
demanded that Nana should serve her sisters as a servant. She was warned
never to reveal her real identity to them. If not for the clause in the
Ambassador’s will, Nana’s identity will not have come to light. The will states
that the three sisters (Funmi, Toun, and Taiwo) must discover the identity of
their fourth sister who is the oldest before the properties can be shared.
For Oba Mojagbe, women are properties to be acquired and an
instrument of sex. As a property they can be put away anytime the owner
(male) desires so. This is why Mojagbe used his women for sacrifice. In order
to attain immortality, he killed his first wife and his own mother for sacrifice.
With his supernatural power, he blocked the womb of the new Olori (queen).
Because he has blocked her womb, she will not be able to have a child of her
own:
Mojagbe: And that one, too. She now wants children ... I see her
drinking concoction and whispering incantations in my room before
coming to bed. Often she cries out in her sleep. ... 537
Though Mojagbe is happy that Olori will not give birth to a child, she, on the
other hand is traumatized by her inability to have a child. She suffers constant
nightmares in which she sees Isepe, the medicine man of Mojagbe, killing her
unborn children:
Olori: The Baba that I saw said as long as your man, Isepe, lives, my
womb is sealed. (Crying)....Why would he want to stop my children
from coming? ... 538
Olori’s desire for a child that will continue the lineage of Mojagbe leads her to
consult a medicine man. The man whom she refers to as Baba makes her drink
537
538
Yerima, Mojagbe, 23
Yerima, Mojagbe, 54
179
different herbal preparations. Her desire is rooted in the belief among the
Yoruba’s that a man or woman without a child is like a pot that cannot contain
water. His or her root will wither off the surface of the earth after a while.
Though there is no logic in the statement, it still holds strongly among the
people. Motunrayo, who becomes the symbol of death in the play, is regarded
by Mojagbe as a slave girl whose purpose is for sexual gratification and as a
shrine-hand (someone who attends to the shrine gods aside the priest). Mojagbe
abuses the sensibility of the women of the community by letting slaves loose to
go and rape them for daring to protest against his kingship half-naked:
Mojagbe: Take six strong and virile slaves. Let them loose amongst the
half-naked women. And if they desire older women like my mothers’
here, they can have them.... 539
Mojagbe’s action is not different from those who raped Mukume the night of
her wedding:
Mukume: …Please! I have been raped three times today already. Kill
me instead. Shoot me and let me die! (Crying.) No! I will not let
another man touch me. Kill me first. 540
As a casualty of terror activities who constantly lives in fear of what might
happen next, Mukume refuses to plead for her life; instead, she wishes for
death as she thinks of life in the hands of another militant after being
dehumanized by those she encountered earlier.
Despite the level of abuse suffered by the women in Little Drop sand
The Sister, they still desire men. Even the level of academic attainment of the
women in The Sister cannot extricate them from abuse. Though Taiwo’s pain
and past abuse becomes the driving force for her survival, others refuse to get
out of the shackles of male domination or male controlled space. Even in Little
Drops, apart from the old woman, Memekize, the rest of the women align with
their torturer (represented in Kuru) in the end and continue as if everything is
normal. Funmi in The Sisters, Azue in Little Drops, and Olori in Mojagbe rely
on the status of being married and on the insulation provided by their office as
the wives of the paramount rulers. Because of the economic cover which their
539
540
Yerima, Mojagbe, 37
Yerima, Little Drops, 10
180
marriages provide, they are likely to accept whatever abuse that might come
from their husbands.
The major issues discussed in Kaffir’s Last Game are brain drain,
betrayal and patriotism. The migration of the skilled laborers or highly
educated members of a particular society to a foreign land where it is believed
that they can have better living conditions is what I refer to as brain drain.
Yerima’s choice of a character like Professor is not an accident. It is to draw
attention to the fact that many renowned academics in Nigeria have relocated to
universities in the United State of America, Canada, Europe, and South Africa
with the intention of finding a better environment for research and
remuneration of service. Greed is the main theme of The Lottery Ticket as death
and betrayal are the main subjects in Mojagbe, The Sisters, and Little Drops.
Danger’s greed pushes him to make attempt on Mama Lizi’s life in order to get
Baba Tailor’s winning ticket. The same greed binds all the characters of the
play together to consider the death of Danger in the hand of Mama Lizi as
normal. This is because Danger’s death removes him from the number of
people that will share the lottery. A common theme prevalent in all the plays is
corruption (both of power and of resources). The telluric women in Mojagbe
were the people who manipulated the people’s choice of a King by presenting
Mojagbe as the people’s choice on the contrary:
Mojagbe: [...] ... the people begged me to become king.
Yeye: We know how that water entered the coconut. Leave that story
alone. It is what you became that spoiled the taste ...pity. 541
Among the Yorubas, the source of the water found in the coconut is a mystery.
The fact that the four telluric Yeye are powerful manipulators and mischievous
elements make them the people behind the mystery of how the “water entered
the coconut.” In this case, both water and coconut are metaphors for secrecy.
Religious charlatanism is a subject in both Kaffir’s Last Game and The
Lottery Ticket. Nigeria is a nation of profuse contradiction, a place where
religious piety and corruption cohabit simultaneously as the following dialogue
between Professor and Mbulelo in Kaffir’s Last Game reveals:
Professor: …We in Nigeria are a very prayerful people. Even a former
president of ours wondered how, with the bad economy and all, the
country still survived. It was prayers.
541
Yerima, Mojagbe, 36
181
Mbulelo: Prayers. That is a new one on me. 542
Nigerians’ recourse to prayer as mediation for solving social, political and
economic problems is also a major issue in The Lottery Ticket, “Na as Muslim
dey beg, Christian dey beg.” 543 They pray for material needs rather for spiritual
sanctity. Lizi narrates an experience that, at a Sunday service, a church member
who claims to be possessed by the spirit was poured a bucket of water to drive
away the spirit. She recalls the number of a car to warn the owner of an
impending danger and the people, including the Pastor, were disappointed as
they thought the numbers were for the lottery. All of the characters in The
Lottery Ticket, apart from Lizi, will kill to be the receiver of the lottery jackpot,
the subject on which the play revolves. As a measure, Mama Lizi is ready to
prostitute her only daughter as long as the old Landlord will exempt her from
paying house rent. She is quick to justify herself by calling it a “business”
opportunity when Landlord suggested marrying Lizi:
Mama Lizi: Lizi if oga Landlord serious, say I no go pay rent, abeg
make you give am eye small.
Lizi: Mama!
Mama Lizi: Na business me I dey. 544
As political satires, Kaffir’sLast Game and The Lottery Ticket make mockery in
a lucid manner of the pretentious religious fanaticism and double standards of
the government.
Socio-Political Contextualization of Texts
Mojagbe: (With disgust.) A cricket ... a common cricket fit for food for
the wall gecko ... a common lizard comes to the palace to kill a king.
(Walks round him.) A childish fool!545
In Mojagbe, Prince Esan’s attempts to assassinate King Mojagbe in his palace
fail. For his action, Prince Esan is condemned to death in the market square to
serve as a deterrent to others who may want to attempt the same act. Esan can
542
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 33
SE: The Muslims are praying the same way the Christians are praying. Yerima, .aThe Lottery
Ticket, 19
544
Yerima, The Lottery Ticket, 11
545
Yerima, Mojagbe, 15
543
182
carry the title of prince because he has right to the throne as he comes from the
same part of the kingdom as Mojagbe.
The action of Esan is similar to what happened in Nigeria under the
Military government. For example, General Yakubu Gowon - who profited
from the nation’s coup and counter coup of 1966 - ruled for nine years
promising to hand over to a democratically elected government on many
occasions before he was finally overthrown by General Murtala Mohammed in
a coup-d’etat in 1975. General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), who overthrew
the government of General Mohammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon (19831985), ruled the country for eight years with various failed attempts at handing
over to a democratically elected government. Even when he had conducted an
election that was adjudged as the freest and fairest in the annal of Nigeria’s
history, he would not leave until he was forced to hand over to an interim
government headed by Chief Ernest Sonekan. 546 Gen. Sanni Abacha, before his
untimely death after four years in office, was planning to transit into a civilian
President. 547 Nigeria’s latest attempt at democracy (1999 to present) was almost
marred by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s attempt to prolong his stay in office after
two terms of four years, as stipulated in the nation’s constitution. Obasanjo
attempted in 2006 to have that part of the constitution changed by the nation’s
National Assembly in order to incorporate a third term in office for president.
Prince Esan’s action in Mojagbe can be interpreted as a throwback to April 22,
1990, when Major Gideon Orkar succeeded in entering the Dodan Barrack
Palace of the Nigerian military dictator Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Though he
captured the Head of State, the coup failed, and Orkar and others involved were
executed.
Prior to the Orkar led coup d’etat, Babangida’s bosom friend, General
Mamman Vatsa (1940-1986), was executed in 1986 alongside many senior
military officers for an attempted coup on his government. This information is
well intended by Yerima to draw the attention of Nigerians to their historical
past. Gideon Orkar and Mamman Vatsa were from the Northern part of
Nigeria, the same region as Gen. Babangida who ordered them to be executed
for their attempt to forcefully remove him from power. There isan echo of both
the Vatsa and the Orkar coup and the eventual killing of the masterminds in
546
The election of June 12, 1993 supposedly won by late Nigerian businessman MKO Abiola
was cancelled by the Head of State without providing a cogent reason. As the time of writing this
paper, Ibrahim Babangida is preparing to contest the Nigerian Presidential election in 2011.
547
In Ahmed Yerima Kaffir’s Last Game published in 1998, it was one of the thrusts of the play
as Mbulelo asks Professor to make a categorical statement to the position of the Nigerian Head of
State on what they in South Africa presume to be a rumour.
183
The Sisters. Yerima’s intent is to present a slice of Nigeria’s history in both
plays. Mojagbe’s position as a war general before assuming the position of king
is intended to reinforce the message of the play. Kaffir’sLast Game and The
Lottery Ticket put a searchlight on the people’s reliance on supernatural
intervention on both economic and other daily needs, even the government’s
declaration of prayer days for the public. The ironic aspect of the nation and its
people is that, despite its religious nature, corruption is rife even among the
religious leaders who also throng the corridor of power seeking to gain
financially from the prayers offered to God for the protection of the politicians’
lives. In Kaffir’sLast Game, the Nigerian transition process of 1996 is revisited
and clearly dissected for its merit. Mbulelo, the South African character in the
play, eager to know Professor’s view on the transition, asks:
Mbulelo: …How is the transition to civil rule going in your country?
Professor: On course. 1998 is our year, and there is so much activities
already.
Mbulelo: Yes, we hear that the activities are people criss-crossing.
They are all in a game of trying to guess which party your head of state
will join. It is less than a year to go and there is still no one with clear
presidential aspiration. This is very strange, don’t you think so,
Professor? 548
Professor who is fully aware of the political situation in his home country, tries
to deflect the questions by attempting to change the direction of the discussion
which he does not seem comfortable with. Mbulelo, who is not ready to end the
discussion, poses a direct question to Professor Omobusola concerning his
opinion on the sincerity of the transition programme being embarked upon by
the Nigerian Head of State:
Mbulelo: Professor, you are just coming from Nigeria, do you think
that your Head of State will hand over to elected civilian President
come October, 1998? 549
Professor becomes religious in his response and would rather allow God to
intervene. Professor, though, would have chosen not to respond to Mbulelo’s
question but for his insistence.
548
549
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 18
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 19
184
Professor: I will like to reassure the people of Africa and indeed the
world, that I have no doubt that by the grace of God, the military will
handover to a democratically elected civilian government by October.
Mbulelo: What about your Head of State?
Professor: General sani Abacha? What about him? There is no big deal
about a military officer becoming an elected president. Look at Lt.
Rawling in Ghana, people voted for him. If the people vote for him,
please let him rule.
Mbulelo: …We in South Africa need to know. The whole world needs
to know. You Nigerians need to know that gone are the days when you
could live in isolation. 550
At that time, Nigerians and the rest of the world shared Professor’s sentiment
for the on-going democratic process being orchestrated by Gen. Sani Abacha.
Insincerity in the democratic process is also a major subject in The Sisters
where the late president continually had himself re-elected into office on four
occasions and was still planning to succeed himself before his untimely death.
Of course, in reality it was not the first time in the history of Nigeria that the
process of transition from military to civilian government would be set up. And
on all occasions, apart from 1979 when Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo handedover
power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari and 1999 when Gen. Abdusalam Abubakar
handed over the power to Olusegun Obasanjo, were efforts in futility. During
the eight-year rule of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), there were more
than two failed attempts of transitional process. Kaffir’s Last Game positions
Yerima as a social commentator: a socio-political critic.
As a social commentator, Yerima entrenches the socio-political realist
issue of religions in his drama, especially the perennial contradictions of
Christianity and African indigenous belief which I have talked about in chapter
three. It is a perennial contradiction because, in the same breath, many of
Yerima’s main characters invoke the services of the Christian God and the
indigenous gods simultaneously to resolve a knotty crisis:
Memekize: ...I prayed to Jesus through his mother the Virgin Mary for
you, and he heard me. He always listens to me. They all do. And when
550
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 19-20
185
I wanted to wash you, I called on Benikurukuru to heal, and she too
did. 551
The opposing religious factors that I mentioned earlier re-vibrate in
Memekize’s prayer to both the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ of the
Christian faith and Benikurukuru, the indigenous goddess of the Niger Delta
creek for healing power. As mentioned in my Chapter three, the Christian
religion restrains its adherents from believing or worshipping any other god,
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me” 552 apart from Jehovah who can only
be reached through Jesus Christ.
In most of the plays investigated in this thesis, Yerima employs a
socio-political realist approach to criticize the cultural and political reality of
Nigeria. When one considers the events that caused the militant insurgencies in
the Nigerian Niger Delta which Yerima presented in Little Drops, one would be
apt to agree with Chinua Achebe that “The old white master was still in power.
He had got himself a bunch of black stooges to do his dirty work for a
commission.” 553 Environmental degradation and neglect of corporate duties and
social responsibilities of the foreign multinational oil companies like Shell,
Chevron, and Mobil, in collusion with the Nigerian federal government, are
major pointers to Achebe’s statement. Whatever leads to the actions of the
Niger Delta militants is planted by both the foreign oil companies and the
Nigerian government. Osaghae, Ikelegbe, Olarinmoye, and Okhonmina
statement captures it thus:
To all intents and purposes, it was the nature of state and corporate
responses, treatment and governance that made violence the only
option. They pushed the region into violence, insurrection and
insurgency. 554
Rather than accede or dialogue with the aggrieved youths and elders of the
Niger Delta, the government and oil companies resort to force, suppression and
551
Yerima, Little Drops, 15
See Exodus 20:3 in King James Version of The Holy Bible
553
Ezenwa-Ohaento, Chinua Achebe: A Biography (Bloomington/Oxford: Indiana University
Press/James Currey, 1997), 137
554
Osaghae, E.E., et al., Youth Militia, Self Determination and Resource Control Struggles in the
Niger Delta Region of Nigeria (Lagos: CDP Nigeria, 2007), 78
552
186
repression. As Osaghae notes, “The youths chose to chest out and challenge the
state with counter violence.” 555 According to Joab-Peterside:
In some of these conflicts, the state security forces watch while
violence raged especially in cases where intelligence reports indicate
that the State’s business interests are not threatened. The reluctance of
the State to provide security in perceived non-oil conflict situations
created civilian insecurity that in turn stimulated rapid privatization of
security [….] often times counterproductive as small arms provided for
collective security resurfaced in intra community disagreements
ultimately exacerbating violence. 556
The international communities were only drawn into the Niger Delta crisis
when the actions of the creek boys caused an increase in the prices of crude oil
in the international market because of shortfall in production from the region.
Efforts by humanitarian agencies were noticed when women and children
became victims of the government’s counter attack in the region. How will one
explain this statement by Memekize: “I hear the government people have sworn
to wipe us all out tonight.” 557 This question-like statement is made out of fear,
against the backdrop of what the federal government is known to have done in
pasttimes.
In November, 1999, the Nigerian federal government, under former
President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), gave orders for the massacre of the
Ijaws of Odi, a town in the Niger Delta, and this action was promptly executed
by the country’s army. Prior to the massacre, it was reported that twelve
members of the Nigerian police were killed by armed militants from the town.
The onslaught of the government saw the death of many civilians. The figure
which Nnimmi Bassey, Executive Director of Environment Right Action, put at
nearly 2500. The three buildings that were left standing in Odi town were the
Anglican Church, the health centre and a bank. In fact, Odi was wiped out. Like
in Kaffir’s Last Game and in Little Drops, Yerima uses realistic “language,
images, characters and conflicts as vessels” 558 to draw his Nigerian reader-
555
Osaghae, E. E., et al., Youth Militia, Self Determination and Resource Control Struggles in the
Niger Delta Region of Nigeria (Lagos: CDP Nigeria, 2007), 78
556
Joab-Peterside, Sofiri, “On the Militarization of Nigeria’s Niger Delta: The Genesis of Ethnic
Militia in River State, Nigeria” in Niger Delta Economies Violence 21 (2007), 2
557
Yerima, Little Drops, 21
558
Yerima, Theatre, Culture and Politics: Essays in Dramatic and Cultural Theory (Lagos:
Concept Publications, 2007), 234
187
audience to the reality around them. He uses vivid imagery in statements such
as:
Memekize: A straight small bullet like a pistol straight into his small
back not breaking a bone …lodged in his stomach. It is swelling. The
stench you smelt, woman, is from his breath. His small stomach is
beginning to rot. That was why he did not ask for food. His stomach is
full of the lead of death....Little drops of blood....His life continues to
sip (sic) away with every little drop of blood.” 559
The expressionsare used to draw out the empathic feeling of the readeraudience towards the plight of the innocent victims. The ire of the readeraudience will be drawn towards the actions of both the Militants and JTF
against innocent children as they are killed without restraint. They are both
guilty of the heinous crimes against humanity. As I have said in my
introduction on the work of Ahmed Yerima, he represents society in many of
his plays without taking a particular position either for or against the
government. In one of my interviews with him, he states that it is the duty of
the playwright to tell the people how things are without thinking of playing
God by providing a solution. Although it is possible to come across some forms
of contradiction when analyzing his plays as I have done. This is because, in
many of his plays, he pitches his tent with the people instead of the government
which he worked for until January 2010.
Yerima writes that one of the inspirations for the play Mojagbe “is the
type of leaders we have. How we forget to learn from history and how man
confronts himself searching for an inner peace which he himself often destroys
in the first place.... And because power itself is excitedly sweet, man will never
learn.” 560 This inspiration from failed leadership and the self-destructive stance
of African governments is poignant in plays like Kaffir’s Last Game, and The
Sisters.
The play Mojagbe reveals the tyrannical life of the main character,
King Mojagbe, who, before the opening of the play, committed inconceivable
atrocities, including human sacrifices and matricide. Mojagbe’s matricide is
intentional and purposeless. The king also involves the town and its citizens
into an unnecessary war with a more powerful state. Whereas the meaning of
sacrifice among the Yorubas’ is for cleansing the land/community, oneself or
559
560
Yerima, Little Drops, 30
Yerima, Mojagbe, (Ibadan: Kraft Books, 2008), 6
188
home of any perceived evils and to deflect impending doom, Mojagbe’s case
has the opposite meaning. The purpose of King Mojagbe’s sacrifices is for the
sole aim of achieving illusionary immortality (longevity in office). Through the
ill advice of his personal priestIsepe, whom he later killed, King Mojagbe
commits matricide and also murders his first wife as requirements for the
needed sacrifice for longevity. He also refuses to perform the yearly kingly
ritual at the Ogun festival; an act the people believed caused the sudden death
of Ogundele, the young priest of Ogun. The yearly kingly ritual at the Ogun
festival is supposed to cleanse the land of evil of the year before and usher it
into a peaceful and prosperous new year.
After the death of Ogundele, Mojagbe marries his widow. This act
within the Yoruba socio-cultural belief is sacrilegious and a taboo because the
young woman is in mourning, and needs to refrain from a relationship with the
opposite sex for a certain period of time. According to Oyeniyi and Ige, “The
mourning period among the Yorubas may last for forty days or four months
(120 days) and the widow is expected to wear a pensive look and be clad in
black attire to all public places.” 561 The marrying of Ogundele’s widow while
in mourning is, in the words of Balogun, a “forbidden act even for a king.” 562
As a tyrant, King Mojagbe shares characteristics with some of
Nigerian’s military governments like General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993)
and General Sanni Abacha (1993-1998). King Mojagbe represses freedom of
speech and disperses revolt or protest by employing all of his military might; a
situation similar to what happened in Nigeria during the government of
Babangida and Abacha when protesters against their regimes were ruthlessly
gunned down. In April, 1986, under General Ibrahim Babangida, many who
protested against the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) orchestrated by
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were gunned down in various cities of
Nigeria. General Sanni Abacha’s government was noted for shooting at
protesters, especially following protests against the annulment of June 12
presidential elections in 1993 by Gen. Babangida which saw Abacha seizing
power from the interim government of Chief Ernest Sonekan.
As death becomes inevitable for King Mojagbe, he is remorseful and
regrets his atrocious acts of killing his own mother and his wife. He begs God
to forgive him his many sinful acts: “My wife and my mother ...all wasted souls
561
See Oyeniyi, A.J., Ige, A., “Widowhood Practices Among the Yorubas of South West
Nigeria: are there Differences in what Women Experiences Due to their Status?” in Gender and
Behaviour, 8/2 2010
http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201012/2187713301.html#ixzz1EnsxKQyN
562
Yerima, Mojagbe, 17
189
then? May Eledumare forgive me.” 563 One can also liken the late president in
The Sisters to King Mojagbe as they both share many similarities. Yerima’s
intention is to use both King Mojagbe and the late president to teach modern
African leaders the end result of misrule and tyranny. Before the sudden death
of the president, he had ruled for four terms of five years each and was
preparing for a re-election under the grand illusion that he was liked by the
people. Taiwo informs Funmi (the widow) that her late husband was a tyrant
who was never liked by the citizens of the nation he presided over:
Taiwo: ....The man had ruled this country for twenty years. Four terms,
four rotten terms, and he was still looking ahead to the future? What
future? Whose future? .... The people were praying for you to leave,
and you had the grand illusion that we loved you and wanted you to
stay for another term? Did you have no eyes? Were you so much in
love with power that you became blind?564
Taiwo statement recaptures the mood of Nigerians when Gen. Sani Abacha
died suddenly on June 8, 1998. At the announcement of Abacha’s death the
street of Lagos and other major cities in Nigeria was full of jubilant people who
celebrated his demise.
In the world of Funmi, after the president’s death, the people celebrated
with a poem composed to belittle his government: “It revealed to me how so
intently, the people my husband had laboured for and served all his life, hated
him. The whole nation celebrated the words of the poem. Children I heard
learnt by heart...” 565 This sit-tight syndrome is common with most African
leaders who are under the grand illusion that without them in power, the nations
they preside over cannot move forward. Cases in point are Egypt under almost
thirty years of Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011) and Libya under Col. Muammar
Gadhafi (1942-2011). Gadhafi ruled for forty-two years and would not leave
power even after six months of violent protest, until he was captured and killed
by those rebellious to his government. It took violent protest and civil war for
changes to occur in these two countries in 2011.
The two major problems of African leaders are greed and fear. They are
so comfortable being in possession of the nation’s commonwealth which they
can spend alone with their families, and so afraid of becoming ordinary
563
Yerima, Mojagbe, 44
Yerima, The Sisters, 19
565
Yerima, The Sisters, 12
564
190
citizens, they refrain from making any post-presidency plans. This fear of being
ousted out of the privilege position of “Your Excellency” to become a member
of the masses is what Funmi grudgingly voices in The Sisters as Taiwo asked
her what she is going to do after leaving the comfort of the presidential palace:
Taiwo: How will you cope Funmi?
Funmi: I don’t know. I am so scared. I have not given a thought to life
outside here. 566
Most African leaders and those around them are afraid of life outside the
confines of presidency; frightened of the reactions of the masses to many of the
atrocities they (leaders) committed while in office, so they refuse to give a
thought to living as ordinary members of society without the accustomed
retinues. These are some of the reasons why the majority of leaders will want to
live and die as the head of state of their various nations.
The Lottery Ticket depicts the contemporary social reality of the
Nigerian lower class. At the lowest step of the Nigerian economic ladder are
those ordinary people who toil daily to provide a manageable sustenance for
themselves and their family. This step is populated with the small quantity food
vendor like Mama Lizi, the road-side tailor, the motor-park tout, the beggar, the
junior police and traffic control personnel; in some instances the landlord in a
squalid or shanty community can belong to the group. In fact this is where you
find the lowest class of the society. The play gives a naturalistic portrayal of
this people as they are found in this society. “Buka” 567, a squalid restaurant is
where people of this class of society frequently congregate. Visible in all the
plays discussed are bad leadership, selfishness, the desire to accumulate sinful
wealth, corruption, illiteracy, hunger and superstitions by the deployment of
cynicism.
Yerima revealed to the world the evils committed under the military
regime of Gen. Sani Abacha in Kaffir’s Last Game. The issues of the
cancellation of the June 12 election, the murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the
perceived “troublesome-wife” of the acclaimed winner of the 1993 election,
Chief MKO Abiola, features prominently in the play. Yerima went ahead to
566
Yerima, The Sisters, 35
The word Buka is a short form of Bukatariat. The word derived from the combination of Buka
and cafeteria refers to a small canteen or space for selling already prepared meals for diners to
either eat right there or take it away. It is different from a restaurant because of the dirty state, it
sells only food popular with the indigenous people and mostly manned by poor and illiterate
people. The word and its application are initially popular among the Yoruba language speakers
until lately when it entered into Nigerian lexicon.
567
191
call the Head of State names like, “Populist Dictator! Embezzler! President and
Liar for life.” 568
The situation that necessitates brain drain in the Nigerian educational
sector up to the end of the twentieth century is treated in the play and captured
by Reuben Embu as he writes:
Generally education has not been accorded the necessary attention in
Nigeria. Governments at all levels have been paying lip service to the
educational sector. This is reflected in the primary, secondary and
higher institutions including the universities that are considered the
highest citadel of learning. The story is usually the same from the
elected civilian government to dictatorial military regimes over the
years. 569
Apart from the political situation in Nigeria, there are other factors like the
inadequate salary paid to academics, incessant closure of the universities and
infrastructural decay in the various institutions of higher learning. A
strangulating experience for academics, Professor tries to explain to Mbulelo
why he must take up an appointment at the University of Cape Town:
Professor: …Do you know that right now, I am richer than two
Universities’ vote put together? Do you know that for the past two
years after the so called review of University teaching staff salaries, I
have been earning ten thousand naira a month. One hundred and
sixteen miserable dollars for a Professor of twenty-five years and still
counting? Do you know that as a Dean, all I was given was ten
thousand naira to run the faculty, with researches, conferences and
all? 570
Though Mbulelo puts it succinctly that, despite the efforts of the South African
government the youths are not positioning themselves for the many
opportunities available to them. Whether the South African government is
568
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 34
Embu, Rueben,“Brain Drain and the University in Contemporary Nigerian: Lessons from
Kaffir’s Last Game” in Gbemisola Adeoti, ed. Muse and Mimesis: Critical Perspectives on
Ahmed Yerima’s Drama (Ibadan: Spectrum, 2007), 74
570
Yerima, Kaffir’s Last Game, 14
569
192
planning for its population571 is not visible as evidence suggests otherwise. The
constant labour unrest and the xenophobic attacks that occurred in the country
since 2004 sheds light on the fact that the majority of black South Africans do
not have jobs.
As indicated in the previous section, the violence among the black
youth in South Africa that Kaffir’s Last Game refers to as “sitting on a keg of
gun powder.” finally escalated with the killing of foreign (African) nationals
staying in the country. The violence against foreigners is a way of telling the
world that all is not well. The play explores to a greater extent, the historical
and political linkage that existed between the two countries (Nigeria and South
Africa) during the period of apartheid in South Africa to the collapse of the
white minority rule. The political relationship between the two countries is such
that it cannot be termed congenial on all sides; it is neither cold nor hot. The
two nations (Nigeria and South Africa) are playing a cat and mouse game
interchangeably, rivalling one another in who is the ‘giant’ of Africa. There is
no bilateral agreement between the two countries for free movement of their
citizens without recourse to visas. Meanwhile citizens of US, UK, and other
European countries can move in and out of South Africa without visa
restrictions.
Though the issue of brain drain seems to be the main thematic
preoccupation of Kaffir’s Last Game, one should nevertheless not lose sight of
the delicate relationship between the two countries in the play. A situation that
necessitates the movement of a nation’s skilled labour from their own country
to another deserves to be addressed. In order to address the issue of loyalty to
one’s nation, Professor is left in a state of confusion at the end of the play. He
has to resolve a raging inner conflict by making a decision of whether to go
ahead to take up the position at the University of Cape Town or return to his
home country. This juncture, if Professor wants to go back to Nigeria or
proceed on his journey to Cape Town, is left to his decision. The exposition of
man’s inner conflicts is a constant technique in Yerima’s narrative style as it is
present in virtually all of his plays.
With Little Drops, Mojagbe and Kaffir’s Last Game, Yerima clearly
positions himself as a dramatist with concerns for the masses. Unlike the
allegorical plays of Wole Soyinka and Femi Osofisan, Yerima refrains from
couching the world of his plays in phantasmagorias by presenting them as they
are with visible references. At the time of writing this work, apart from Bunmi
571
By the population here I am referring to the indigenous African community and not to the
European-African community.
193
Julius-Adeoye’s War at Peace and Ahmed Yerima’s Little Drops there seems
to be little or no other play from Nigeria’s literary landscape which takes a
realist approach to the dramatic construction of the Niger Delta crisis.
Conclusion
These works present Yerima as a fearless, twenty-first century socio-political
realist dramatist who is not afraid of whose horse is gored. Just as he did with
his other plays, he risked his position 572 as the Artistic Director of a
government owned institution by continuously pitching his tent with the masses
and allowing his art to reflect Nigeria’s society. In most of the works,
especially Kaffir’s Last Game, The Lottery Ticket and Little Drops, Nigeria’s
festering political system and social institutions are x-rayed in order for the
generality of the reader-audience to proffer a suitable solution. I have also
highlighted the fact that the issue of religious realism, which I discussed in
chapter three, has a place in Little Drops and Mojagbe. All the plays reflect
Nigeria’s socio-political reality. I have linked the analyzed plays to some
visible historical past within the post-independent Nigerian and indeed African
society, drawing on visible names and political figures within the country and
the whole of the African continent. Socio-political realism in drama is not
necessarily a new form of realism; I believe what makes it different is that it
uses popular indices like names, professions, institutions, events, etc., within
the society to interrogate dramatic discourse. Socio-political realist plays give
representations of everyday concern and the politics of the society by arguing
the point of the disenfranchised members of the community. A definition of
socio-political realism that best captures my argument is the one which states
that it “is a term used to describe visual and other realistic art works which
chronicled the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor and are
critical of the social environment that causes these conditions.”573
Socio-political realism is faced with the same problems that its hydraheaded root (realism) has. I believe that socio-political realism, as one of the
572
Shortly after staging Little Drops in 2009, Yerima’s position as the Director-General of the
National Theatre, National Troupe and Abuja Carnival was taken away from him by the
government. To force him out of the position, he was returned to his formal position as Artistic
Director of Nigerian National Troupe while other people took over the headship of National
Theatre of Nigeria and Abuja Carnival. This decision may have contributed to his decision to
resign the government appointment and return back to the university system as a professor. At
the moment, he is a Professor of Theatre and Cultural Studies at Redeemer’s University (RUN),
Nigeria.
573
See “Social Realism Vs. Socialist Realism” at
http://www.huntfor.com/arthistory/C20th/socrealism.htm. Accessed on 15 dec. 2010.
194
many sprouting heads of realism, aims at an intimate as well as critical
relationship between art and the society it claims to be representing. Yerima’s
socio-political realist plays give details of everyday life (names of persons, of
places, of events, of institutions, languages etc), creation of social types
characteristic behaviour, etc. For example, Kaffir’s Last Game and Little Drops
have narratives that deal with the social and political system in Nigeria and
how they affect the ordinary man in the community with visible references.
Dramas of socio-political realism that criticize anti-masses policies of
governments or harmful socio-cultural practices may have immense impact on
cultural and political debates as well as among intellectuals. But to what extent
is the power of socio-political realist drama able to effect change in society?
Many theatre critics of African descent have argued that theatre has a dual
functionality. That is, theatre is both entertaining and didactic. According to
Femi Osofisan:
…all our artists—from the ancient oral performers to their modern
scribal heirs; from Negritude's Leopold Senghor to Tigritude's Wole
Soyinka—have accepted and reveled in their identity as communal
spokespersons and as the conscience of their societies. The art of
narration in our communities has always served didactic as well as
pleasurable ends. The injunction to ‘teach by entertaining’, that dictum
so basic to Aristophanes, to Racine, and to Synge, underlies the
raconteur's praxis in black Africa. The folk tales entertain with their wit
and song, but they also teach and inculcate the community's acceptable
ethics, they enlighten the young about the nature of human society and
the environment, about the teeming life of the forests and rivers, and
the appropriate canons of social interaction and penal redress. From
them we extract the valuable lesson that stories are never ideologically
innocent. 574
The question that arises from the foregoing is what is socio-political realist
drama?In this context I refer to socio-political realist dramas as those plays that
are constructed with the intent of aiming to reveal some social and political
malaise besetting society.
German playwright Bertolt Brecht employed the theatre as a platform
for political ideas and for the creation of a critical aesthetics. He refined epic
574
Osofisan, Femi,“Reflections on Theatre Practice in Contemporary Nigeria” in African Affairs,
97 (London: Oxford university Press, 1998), 83
195
theatre to further project his political ideas. Brecht’s works are not only popular
in Europe and United States of America; they are also an inspiration for
Nigerian dramatists like Femi Osofisan. To Africans, his alienation technique is
not what is of paramount significance, as such, but the didactic nature of this
technique. The didactic nature of his theatre helped dramatists like Femi
Osofisan to shroud his revolutionary dramatic content in metaphor in order to
avoid censorship.
Socio-political realist plays by Nigerian playwrights discuss the
malaise in Nigerian society. They reveal the fraud and corruption endemic in
the Nigerian polity. Fraud and corruption are negative Siamese-twins that are
present among the different strata of the Nigerian government. More than half
(approximately 29 years) of the fifty years of the nation’s self-rule were spent
under military dictatorship, 575 who were more corrupt than the civilians they
sacked on allegation of corruption. The years under democratic government
were not spared of leaders who also used their power and influence primarily in
the pursuit of private goals. Infact, the military’s excuses for coming into
government in Nigeria is always premised on the corruption of civilian leaders
and their employment of power and influences primarily for their own gains.
These leaders (civilian and military) subject the society to decay and poverty.
Dilapidated structures, international debt, incessant strikes, failed social
systems, corruption, civil unrest, extra judicial killings etc., are the results left
behind by successive governments in Nigeria.
575
These leaders are military Generals, starting with Aguiyi Ironsi (1966-1966), General Yakubu
Gowon, (1966-1975), Generals Muritala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo (1975-1979), Gen.
Mohammadu Buhari (1984-1985), Gen. Ibrahim B. Babangida (1985-1993), Gen. Sanni Abacha
(1993-1997), Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (1998-1999). See Nigeria: Chronology of main
political events since independence, IRIN, 2003.
http://www.irinnews.org/InDepthMain.aspx?InDepthId=30&ReportId=70462. Accessed
Thursday 26/08/2010. 06:55
196